Welcome to yet another Sunday Brain Dump!
Topic 1: Haven’t done much
I have to admit to not having done much in the last week. After many years of not watching hockey regularly, I’ve returned to it, and it’s the playoffs now. My team, the Montreal Canadiens, have played 7 games and have now won 4 (they won Game 7 against the Tampa Bay Lightning in Tampa) and are now moving on to the next round. So I haven’t done a whole lot in WoW. But I also don’t have a lot to do in WoW. Farming remains the constant chore, but it does sometimes feel like a chore. Maybe I’ll take month off or something. I feel like I need to find a goal in the game.
Topic 2: Classic Plus?
There’s a lot of talk about a Classic Plus mode — hints from Blizz, a possible announcement at BlizzCon, stuff like that. And there’s the final shutdown of Turtle WoW coming this month. I can understand, Blizzard/Microslop need to protect their trademarks and copyrighted material. But my understanding is that Turtle WoW was developing new CLASSIC content? Wow. That’s wild. And it’s SO COOL. Different zones, mobs, quests, loot? Incredible.
So is that what Blizzard’s potential Classic Plus mode will include?
I played a tiny bit of Season of Discovery and I … didn’t like it. Was it kind of neat to see new talents/spells/abilities on different classes and specs? Sure. But they were all a bit weird to me. A mage, healing? Very weird. And having some key abilities available at like, early levels? My nephew was a rogue who had shadowstep extremely early on. I don’t know if that’s the way to go, at least for me and my interest. Part of what I always enjoyed about levelling was the gaining power aspect. Getting talents at 10 and then building on that every single level, even if you didn’t get anything at the trainer, that was awesome. So it’s weird to me to see stuff showing up at the start.
But the idea of exploring new zones at like, 50-60? New quests? New gear? Maybe alternative dungeons or small raids? I’m not saying I would do a ton of that group content, but I’m saying it would interest me.
Topic 3: What happens after Naxxramas?
The question occurs to me that if Classic Plus exists, is Naxxramas still the endgame in Classic? I mean, you typically go Molten Core, Blackwing Lair, AQ40, Naxxramas, right? With things like ZG and AQ20 thrown in there for people who are maybe trying to gear up to get into something like Molten Core.
But what happens after Naxx? In a Classic Plus, that is? Do you get a Tier 4 that isn’t from Burning Crusade? Or a Tier 5? What about a Tier 6? Because the thing about Classic is that it does have a termination point. After Naxxramas, that was it. You headed to Outlands. Naxx released June 19, 2006 and patch 2.0.1 launched on December 5, 2006, followed quickly by Burning Crusade’s release on January 9, 2007.
So what do you do after Naxx? IS there something after Naxx in a Classic Plus world? I don’t play a ton of Classic these days, but I know that people were definitely raiding Naxx successfully, way more than originally. I’m sure that it having existed for 15+ years before people got into it in Classic servers really helped, as most of the challenges are solved. People know how to do 4 Horsemen. People know how to do Instructor Razuvious. There’s no mystery left. And raids and stuff have gotten harder since Naxx. Kael’thas and Vashj were hard compared to what we saw in Naxx (well, the Wrath version of Naxx at 80, anyway).
Another question: if there is something post-Naxx in a Classic Plus world, does that mean one has to go through MC, BWL, AQ40 and Naxx to get the gear required to go through whatever comes next? Or will they introduce a catch-up mechanic?
There’s an interesting site, The Classic Project, at wowclassic.plus. These people are not affiliated with Blizzard, but are taking surveys to see how people feel about various bits of change in a potential Classic Plus world. It’s kind of neat, just need to sign in with a Discord account and take the surveys if you like.
In one of the surveys about the world, it asks about attunements.
Should attunements be streamlined/made easier?
- No, and if you touch the Onyxia attunement questline, I’ll lock you away with Marshal Windsor
- Sure, cut out the aggressive travel sections, but keep the spirit of attunements intact
- Yes, I’m tired of going to BRD or grinding righteous orbs just to enter a raid – cut it down and allow players to walk in easily.
I definitely voted no, because I will lock someone away with Marshal Windsor if I need to! I believe that attunements do a lot for bonding and team building.
Seriously, go do these surveys. I’m doing one right now and one of the questions is:
Should Damage/Heal over Time spells be able to crit baseline for all classes? The options are No, DoTs and HoTs shouldn’t crit, Yes, change it to allow them to crit, or Only if they make it a new talent that you can spec into.
And I instinctively went for the talent and then stopped, remembering one of the Blizz folks at a BlizzCon years and years ago saying that if you didn’t take a specific talent in one of the DPS warrior trees, you weren’t being creative or imaginative, you were just being a bad (whatever spec) DPS warrior. So while I don’t particularly like the idea of HoTs and DoTs critting for anyone, I don’t like the idea that you have to talent for it. If there’s an action someone can take in order to get their spells critting, and they don’t take it, that seems like a bad (class name here), right?
Basically, this survey is making me think a lot about what I want to see in a Classic Plus world.
What about you? Any interest in such a thing? What would it look like to you?