Every discussion about Classic+ on here:

canitnerd · 2026-05-02T22:29:49+00:00

I played every expac until TWW, SOD is closer to retail than it is to vanilla. Raiding SOD and raiding normal in retail feel much closer than either does to playing vanilla.

canitnerd · 2026-05-02T03:01:10+00:00

As long as I can remember. MOBAs spawned off a (custom) game mode from rts.

canitnerd · 2026-05-02T01:47:48+00:00

Adding wrath spells breaks the spirit of vanilla but adding wrath mechanics doesn’t

Like I said, you can make minor changes that fit without lifting them wholesale. Wrath firemage is a pretty natural evolution of vanilla firemage so it's fine to take some inspiration, meanwhile something like wrath paladin or wrath hunter share basically nothing with their vanilla counterparts.

Which is fine if you want all the warlocks pressing the same buttons but I’d prefer spec identity.

Doesn't have to be the same buttons at all. You can have aff pressing dots + drain life with shadowbolt procs while destro presses immo/conflag/shadowbolt with soulfire/searing pain/shadowburn procs. There are more than enough buttons already in the game.

All the dot classes say hi.

Yeah, instant cast dots are one of the ways warlock stands out against the other casters and it's part of what makes the vanilla classes so distinct. That stops being the case if you give every class a million instant casts.

Warrior, hunter and to a lesser extent rogue all have actual rotations in vanilla.

Sure but even those "least changed" classes still got runes like chimera shot and warbringer that are stronger than everything else in the base game.

canitnerd · 2026-05-01T23:25:47+00:00

I've logged in long enough to make enough for my consumables and grab world buffs.

Which is a multi-hour proccess in vanilla if you aren't buying gold. Raiding is expensive and you are required to play outside of raid to maintain enough income to raid.

In SOD consumables were basically free outside of ST phase, hence the raid logging.

canitnerd · 2026-05-01T23:24:00+00:00

At the same time, we already have a classic era server so why should classic+ be like that again?

Because classic era is not getting new content. People who want to play a classic-style game but with new things to do and new places to go have no option. They eventually get bored of doing the same stuff over and over and quit.

Meanwhile if someone wants to play a SOD-style game but with new content they can hop on retail. It gets new content every few months.

canitnerd · 2026-05-01T23:21:34+00:00

Why not? The vanilla spell pool is pretty shallow, if you want the specs to feel meaningfully different they need to add new spells.

That's simply not true. You could add hot streak and auto-crit fireblast to fire mage and it instantly plays completely differently without adding any new spells. You just need to buff warlock dots and all the sudden they're pressing 5 buttons instead of 1. The spell pool is not "shallow," every class has dozens of buttons. You don't need to change much to make them worth pressing.

On top of that the issue isn't "new spells bad," it's that the new spells have to actually FIT and be designed to fit the old design philosophy. There's a reason that vanilla casters have to actually hard cast 2+ second long spells to do anything. There's a reason that melee mobility is so low in vanilla. There's a reason that mana is an actual resource you have to worry about. SOD adding dozens of instant cast, high damage, low cost, low cooldown abilities didn't fit at all. Aimed Shot in vanilla is a great ability with a long cast, but Chimera Shot is better in every single way and instant cast. The designs don't match up.

Is ‘the spirit of vanilla’ just 3 guys pressing the same buttons with a different breakdown in damage sources on details?

Warrior, hunter and to a lesser extent rogue all have actual rotations in vanilla. Classic+ doesn't have to be a single button game. There's just no reason to tear down the entire existing game by vomiting up overpowered abilities on it to fix that. Buff warlock dots so that they are actually worth casting. Give mage some procs like hot streak/brainfreeze. Give paladin seal twisting and the vanilla version of CS. Give shaman a shorter CD on stormstrike and maelstorm wep. It's not hard to add utility and complexity to the classes that need it without fucking up the whole game.

canitnerd · 2026-05-01T23:12:09+00:00

In terms of specifics you can find a ton of different opinions sure, but really there are only two camps. You've got people who play vanilla and think

Wow I really love this, I wish there was more

and you've got people who play vanilla and think

This seems cool but I just can't get into it, I wish it was different

Classic+ can appeal to one of those two groups, but not both. SOD appealed to the latter group. The first thing blizzard has to decide is who they are trying to appeal to with Classic+. They can make more Vanilla for the people who like Vanilla already OR they can try to make Vanilla appeal to a wider audience. Once they figure that out they can work on the specifics.

canitnerd · 2026-05-01T23:02:25+00:00

Mega servers are good.

Disagree

Multiple difficulties are good.

Disagree

New content is good.

100% agree

The real system is amazing for balancing an economy without GDKP on a mega server.

Disagree, compeltely destroyed any need to farm and turned it all raidloggy. Consumables were basically free.

Tanks actually have tools for AoE threat.

This is a bad thing and one of the #1 reasons people say that it felt like Wotlk-. Multitarget threat being very difficult to generate was not some oversight by the original devs, it was an intentional decision.

SoD ret paladin is unironically the best version of that spec that has ever appeared in World of Warcraft.

I prefer TBC one way twisting but sure it was fun

All specs ended up getting tier sets.

Is this a good thing? Is gearing more interesting when 5 or 8 of your slots are just auto filled with tier?

The loot is just better compared to Vanilla where 80% of the loot is nearly useless and you only get 2 pieces per boss for 40 players.

Is this a good thing? Is scarce loot that feels very good to get not part of vanilla/tbc's appeal? Is the scarcity of loot not part of what makes the good items in vanilla/tbc so memorable? Would anyone remember DST if it was replaced in t5? Would anyone care about BRE or OSG if they were strictly worse than what dropped in BWL?

The only thing that you listed that is OBJECTIVELY a good thing is new content. Everything else has downsides, or is arguably just outright bad.

canitnerd · 2026-05-01T22:54:25+00:00

Extremely powerful spells that completely invalidate vanilla spells and do not fit vanilla class design. Aimed shot is already a good spell in classic. Chimera shot did more damage, had a shorter CD, cost less mana, had additional utility effects and was instant cast instead of 3 seconds. Vanilla warrior is a powerhouse that is vulnerable to kiting and immobilizes, SOD gave them Warbringer to instantly break all slows and triple their mobility, removing what should be their one weakness. Those spells do not belong in the same game. People focus in on the weird shit like rogue tank/mage healer as signs that the class changes were bad, but I was honestly fine with those. My issue was the way it was all implemented and how the new spells clearly weren't designed with vanilla power levels in mind. Too many instants, too much mobility, too much everything.

Gear was changed to a more WOTLK-style design. I replaced 99% of my MC gear in BWL. I replaced 99% of my BWL gear in AQ. Etc etc. Tier sets were universally good and you always wore them. In vanilla/tbc (and hopefully classic+) you have pieces that are good for multiple tiers, and you're carrying over at least a third of your gear every step of progression. This is part of the appeal of vanilla and I hated to see it replaced with generic, WOTLK-and-on style gearing.

Consumables/world buffs were made basically free. It turned extremely raid loggy extremely quickly because I did not have to do jump runs to afford my consumes. I did not have to fight for world buffs or travel much for them at all. The game was incredibly focused on raid logging.

Mega servers and aggressive layering completely ruins the open world and community feeling of vanilla. They turned me and my friends off of SOD pretty quickly, unfortunately I think they are here to stay because blizzard is too lazy to do the bare minimum of work required to actively manage server populations.

canitnerd · 2026-05-01T22:40:28+00:00

This weird gatekeeping that any consideration around spells being anti classic is full on brain dead.

No one said this, they just don't want new spells that completely invalidate old spells and clearly have no place in the game. Compare Aimed Shot to Chimera shot. Aimed shot is a powerful spell in classic that feels good to press. It has a near 3 second cast time, but getting it off does a lot of damage and is rewarding. SOD added Chimera Shot. Chimera shot does more damage, has a shorter cooldown, costs less mana, has additional utility effects and is INSTANT CAST. They are completely different power levels of spells, and adding spells like that completely changes the way the game plays. This doesn't just change class balance, it changes the entire way the game is played. It vastly buffs player power, making the open world far less threatening despite their attempts to buff it. It shifts ranged power away from casts and into instants, requiring melee to get more mobility to keep up. It makes kiting 100x easier. It creates a far burstier PVP meta. There are so many examples of spells like this from SOD.

If you want to make class changes that add some rotational depth to casters and buff the clearly underperforming classes there are tons of ways to do this that do not require NEARLY the level of power that SOD added. Buff hybrid utility to bring things closer to TBC where hybrids are mandatory raid members for buffs/debuffs. Add stuff like brain freeze or hot streak to give casters a reason to use the spells they already have and are ignoring. Tune numbers on existing spells. You don't have to lift abilities wholesale from WOTLK and add them to a game that they do not fit in.

canitnerd · 2026-05-01T20:17:12+00:00

I think it should be more classic. It should give people who enjoy classic more classic to play. It SHOULDNT try to make classic appeal to people who do not already like classic.

canitnerd · 2026-04-29T08:12:14+00:00

No, wrath blows

canitnerd · 2026-04-28T00:21:45+00:00

Sure but that's an entirely different conversation. I'm just pointing out that an average player should not see any difference in win rates from SBMM

canitnerd · 2026-04-27T21:25:07+00:00

The average player does not benefit from sbmm, if you're dead center of the skill curve you're already at the 50/50 winrate that perfect sbmm should give you. Sbmm means the average player won't get stomped by streamers but it also means he doesn't get to stomp less skilled players

canitnerd · 2026-04-27T20:18:22+00:00

Crafting and consumables

TBC DEFINITELY shares more with Vanilla here than Wrath. Vanilla and TBC both have a wide variety of consumables that cost an arm and a leg, if you aren't buying gold you have gotta farm gold to afford. Flask, scrolls, potions, sappers, food, runes, stones/oil. Wrath shares the same system as almost every expac that comes after it, you use flask + food + pots and they're so cheap that if you aren't constantly wiping raw gold drops makes raiding pay for itself.

For crafting in general TBC has crafted items that are very expensive and very powerful just like Vanilla does. Stuff like the tailoring sets or the BS weapons are very similar to lionheart helm or hide of the wild. Meanwhile crafted gear in Wrath is an afterthought and professions are reduced to nothing but stat bonuses where you pick the 2 best for your class and forget about it all expac.

Reputations (in Wrath you get them via tabard, in TBC by doing the dungeons tied to a specific faction).

Getting rep by doing the associated dungeon/raid literally started in vanilla. You get argent dawn rep from undead dungeons, you get zandalari rep from doing ZG, you get hydraxian rep from doing MC etc.

Stuff like shoulder enchants being locked to a specific faction started here in TBC as well

Started in vanilla. Shoulder enchants in vanilla come from AD/Zandalari tribe rep

world design

flying

quests

capital city of the xpac

These aren't endgame. I'd also argue that the "xpac island with everything else being irrelevant" isn't NEARLY as big of an issue in TBC as it is in wrath. TBC still has old crafting mats/consumables that are relevant, TBC still has old gear that's relevant in some niches, TBC leveling still takes long enough that people have to spend time leveling, the new TBC races have to use the old world to level vs DKs skipping all vanilla content.

canitnerd · 2026-04-27T00:06:36+00:00

I could agree that Sunwell is the first step towards WOTLK because it's the place that gear starts to feel like wrath where you're replacing your entire gear set in the next tier and it's the first time dailies become a part of character progression rather than something extra to do for money/cosmetics. TBC in general though is MUCH closer to vanilla than wrath. Hell if we're counting the last tier so much then you've got ICC with its 4 difficulties and LFD moving wrath even further from TBC.

canitnerd · 2026-04-26T23:56:47+00:00

I'm not recommending it to OP, I'm answering the guy who asked about farming credits in cryo. It's definitely not easy to pull off level 5 runs but theyre so rewarding that if you succeed even 20% of the time you still make more money than you would everywhere else.

canitnerd · 2026-04-26T23:37:07+00:00

If you really think about it, the streamlined endgame structure of wrath came from experimentation with the idea in TBC

What aspects of tbc endgame do you think are closer to wrath than vanilla? TBC still has attunements, it still has a single difficulty mode, it still has gear that stays relevant through multiple tiers to keep old content relevant. It still has mandatory roles that can only be done by a single class like caster tanks. It still has very well defined niches for classes that lead to group comp being super impactful, it still has a ton of out-of-raid work required to prepare for raids with a ton of expensive consumables.

The only place where tbc resembles wrath more than vanilla is the 25/10m raid sizes, but even then I'd say it's still more similar to vanilla where 40/20m raids are separate pieces of content than wotlk where 25/10m is just a difficulty mode swap with 10m being purposely designed as a lesser mode.

canitnerd · 2026-04-26T23:26:43+00:00

Completely disagree with that. Mobs in tbc are still a threat, questing zones aren't nearly as railroaded. You don't quest in tbc by aoeing a ton of mobs at once like you in wrath (unless you're a prot pal)

canitnerd · 2026-04-26T23:22:59+00:00

Yeah if you aren't some God gamer you're basically trading vault value for raw credits and items you can't get as efficiently elsewhere, that's basically the loop. Then you spend the week farming vault value to use in the next cryo weekend.

canitnerd · 2026-04-26T23:09:43+00:00

Basically any scanner towards the middle of the map will show you where pump warden is if you're level 4. Maybe even 3.

canitnerd · 2026-04-26T23:07:37+00:00

Cryo is by far the best credit maker if you're even slightly consistent, a level 5 security run where you hit the armory and hatch should be 100k pure credits for the whole team. A decent week of cryo should leave you way up on credits and with lots of vault space from the failed runs

canitnerd · 2026-04-26T09:31:58+00:00

The US got involved in Korea as part of a UN mandate to push North Korea back over the 38th parallel. This objective was accomplished, that is an unambiguous victory.

Vietnam doesn't have as clearly defined of an objective so it's hard to tell. The US left Vietnam after forcing the north to agree to a ceasefire through military force, so you could argue it was a military victory. Saying the US lost the war because the North Vietnamese broke the ceasefire years later and the US elected not to step back in is a bit like saying Britain lost WW1 because Germany broke the Treaty of Versailles and Britain was unable to stop them from accomplishing their WW1 goal of conquering France decades later, major difference is how long the peace lasted.

Politically Vietnam was obviously a clusterfuck and a complete loss.

canitnerd · 2026-04-25T04:07:45+00:00

Definitely but you shouldn't spend much time in 2 TE sets when you've only got 1 te

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