Classic Plus

 

            Hi… Sooo I’m back, already, with some more thoughts. I think this will be better, but I am a little sleep deprived at the moment so who knows. I do like my weird FPS version of World of WarCraft from my last post but the more I thought about the possibility of Classic Plus and that they supposedly hinted at in the latest State of Azeroth my mind has been more focused on that.

            I had heard either from that State of Azeroth video or somewhere else that the Season of Discovery servers were still up but no one was on them so I hopped on and sure enough it was dead. Dead dead. I’ve never seen WoW so empty before, it was weird; went into Thunder Bluff, type /who and nothing, no one, spooky. Sad. While looking for info on SoD I was coming up with people talking about Classic Plus and I wasn’t sure what that was supposed to be at the time but I think overall it’s supposed to be Classic but once we are max level there is new content or that the devs will continue to make new content and that sounds promising. In my searches I also found people talking about how they shouldn’t raise the level cap and that “Final Fantasy 14 had a level cap for 7 years and it was great” and “horizontal progression is best.” I agree with that last statement, that does sound best but then I also was thinking about Fellowship and I think Blizzard should follow along in those footsteps.

            First of all I think we should start out at max level. I’ve leveled up countless characters to max, I don’t want to HAVE to do it again to get to the new things because then I might not actually make it to the new things. Like I said in my last post (somewhere in that mess); just focus on the “fun part.” If I want to level a character I can do that in retail or Classic. Same with PvP, I’m thinking PvP shouldn’t be in this version. Again; it is elsewhere if that is what you truly want to do it. I think when we make a new character we should start off at the gates of either Orgrimmar or Stromwind, have a quest to talk with our class trainer and they give us our spells one at a time (or all at once if you want) and tell you about the spell, use it on a training dummy a few times, get the next spell once comfortable and repeat until you have all the spells for that “season.” I still want professions so I would like to be given our mounts right from the get go, ground and/or flying. We all have a plethora of mounts we’ve collected over the years, just give them to us (I would also like some new ones for certain achievements or something; basically I’d like a better mount for For the Horde. Just saying.). I think the mobs in the world shouldn’t give any real rewards, all our gear should come from dungeons and such, the mobs should be there to make gathering materials for our professions not too boring and at most give us money. There’s nothing out there, no secrets, no hidden rare elites, it’s raid, raid, raid.

            I see this being similar to other live service games “seasons” where they last for, I don’t know, two or three months? So let’s just say a season lasts three months; in that time we have a handful of dungeons we can quest in that maybe rotate weekly. When we get into a dungeon we are given quests from a talking head, an NPC in there and/or find items that need to be brought to someone in the world; no running around all the capital cities looking for “!” Now these dungeons can be different each time you go in, one time you go into Ragefire Chasm you fight the troggs, next time it’s cultists, next time it’s a bunch of elementals. Wailing Caverns; could be the druid of the fang then another time it can be the little spore/mushroom people we’ve been dealing with in The War Within. Shadow Fang Keep could have a bunch of ghosts like usual, a pack of feral Worgen, the Scarlet Crusade. Maybe at the end of the dungeon you’ll find a chest or a few chests like at the end of delves and this is where you might get some of your gear. So the seasonal gear will be designed to help you do the seasonal raid with certain resistances, set bonuses, ect. You can do the raid at anytime if you’d like but the dungeon gear would be helpful. Once you complete the raid what do you get? Better gear? Why? You just did the raid why would you need BETTER gear? I think if there is no level cap, there’s no real reason to play with gear stats so there’s no real reason for better gear. This isn’t like retail where you chase bigger and bigger numbers so I think the reward should be mounts, cosmetic armor sets, basically like how we have raid sets for each new expansion or significant patch but in this case it’s just purely for transmogging. I can see people not being happy about that per se but again, I don’t WANT to raise a level cap or anything like that. I don’t know how FF14 handled that situation, anyone know? I also think each season the devs could change up our spells a bit, take away a spell or two and give us some new ones.

            I think those might me the most clear and coherent paragraphs I’ve made in a long time. That about sums up what I’d like to see, now is just kind of fantasy land. As far as races go I think we should get everything up to Cataclysm so Blood Elves, Draenei, Worgen and Goblins. We don’t need their starting zones or anything like that because everyone is just going to be plopped down in front of their capital city but since they are all within Azeroth then maybe it’d be fine if they did it in such a way that didn’t change the land to Cataclysm times. And for the love of god just give the Alliance their fucking High Elves so they can stop whining. There are Elves in the Alliance, the Silver Covanant, so I don’t know why it can’t happen. For the Horde (heh) I don’t know, people have wanted Ogres for some reason, I’m not really a fan, I’d rather have the Mok’Nathal myself. I don’t know if Blizzard would want to do either one because then they’d have to make armor sets for a new group of people that they haven’t before, the High Elves are the same exact thing as Blood Elves so there would be no issues there. Maybe we’d get the Forest Trolls but I don’t think that would be likely for “lore” reasons.

            I think adding some new classes to Classic Plus would be good too. I remember during Season of Discovery there was talk about Dwarf shaman being added and the reasoning they should've been added was because the Stormhammer Dwarves were the ones that primarily supplied the Alliance with their griffin riders in the second and third war and they hurled “storm hammers,” hammers infused with lightning and I was like “Yeah, okay, I can buy into that logic.” Another thing I saw floating around during SoD was paladins getting runes that were more like death knight spells. I don’t know if that ever actually happened but I’d like it to and if it did then the Forsaken should/could get some paladins. I think along with this sort of thinking of certain clans providing certain classes to the given factions each class/race combo should have exclusive looks in the character creator. I think that would make people look are each race more and maybe choose a different class then they would otherwise. So Stormhammer Dwarves have certain face paint, maybe mohawks and other different hair styles. Tauren shaman have certain looks while Tauren druids have other styles. Stuff like that would be fun.

            I kind of would like the art to be updated a bit though, also. Not exactly the bouncy way retail looks now but still look like WarCraft 3 just if it was in the StarCraft 2 engine, if that makes sense. I want it to still feel WC3 but just be a bit better. Smoother maybe? I’d also be okay with reagents still being a thing, I really enjoy that kind of thing. Need to have an ankh to reincarnate, that sort of thing. I don’t know if that classifies as “immersion” but whatever it is I like it. I wouldn’t mind tank shaman still being a thing. I’d try it out more, probably wouldn’t tank for raids but maybe for dungeons.

            So, that’s the wind up and the pitch; what do you think? I think Blizzard could do really interesting things with the dungeon formula and stuff with this and they also could use other expansions dungeons also. Do some Wrath of the Lich King stuff, Arthas is still “alive” in this timeline so we could have Wrath dungeons or the Scourge could invade old dungeons or we could have some new ones and once that event is over they “retreat” and we’ll deal with them again in the future. I think those final raids where we would fight Arthas and stuff maybe shouldn’t be in the rotation just so he can always “live” and the threat of him attacking again is always there? Yes? No? What are your hopes and dreams for Classic Plus? Any races you have wanted to play as in World of WarCraft? Let me know in the comments and I’ll be sure not to post anything tomorrow… bye-bye!

            @AztecSauce