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World of Warcraft Classic |OT| We're Going Home
- Thread starter AV
- Start date
- |OT|
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demented waffle
Member
Not until 3pm pacific time on August 26th.
AV
We ain't outta here in ten minutes, we won't need no rocket to fly through space
Thought I'd throw out some brief summaries of the pros and cons for each class for those stuck deciding and who don't want to rake through hours of video or pages of threads. Believe me, I've spent more than enough time on this stuff myself.
When I use "default" below, that's because every class (except warrior) has one role they're "supposed" to fill. Vanilla was designed that way. You can choose other roles with some classes but they are generally all significantly weaker and you might have to find a guild willing to take you on in this role.
Of course this is all very rough and vague and if you're interested in a class there's plenty of places you can find deeper dives into each one.
Warrior
+ Default tanks, always wanted for groups
+ Top tier DPS
+ Godlike in BGs with a healer friend
- Overpopulated
- Worst leveling experience, very gear dependent
- Worst duellers
Priest
+ Default healers, always sought after
+ Excellent in BGs and duels, Mind Control is the most fun ability in the game
+ High tier leveling with wands and spirit tap
+ One of the only classes to wear full tier sets as BiS, epic questline for staff
- Many people rolling priest
- Shadow isn't great at end game, may be hard to find raid spots as one
Rogue
+ Top tier DPS
+ Great in PVP
+ Lockpicking utility, pickpocketing for gold farming
+ Wears much of their tier sets as BiS
- Lots of rogues
- Fierce gear competition
- Not great leveling outside of stealthing to quest mobs at the back of caves
Mage
+ Top tier DPS
+ Great in PVP
+ Great utility - portals, food and water
+ Great gold farmers
+ Top tier leveling especially with AOE farming
- Super boring PVE rotations (frostbolt spam)
- Very overpopulated
- Very squishy (glass cannon class)
Warlock
+ Good DPS
+ Fun in PVP (fear)
+ Good utility - summoning, healthstones, water breathing
+ 2nd easiest leveling experience
+ Practically free level 40 mount
- Will need to spend time before raids farming soul shards
- Tier sets look great but aren't good until T3
- Pretty boring playstyle in raids (shadowbolt spam)
Hunter
+ Probably the highest skill ceiling in vanilla, learn to move and shoot and weave and you'll be great
+ Best leveling experience bar none and thus best class for new players
+ Good in PVP if you know what to do
+ Great gold farmers
+ Fun PVE playstyle/rotation
+ Wears every tier set in full as BiS
- Lowest skill floor, will be a lot of bad hunters, you'll need to make yourself stand out
- DPS is good for a while but drops off hard in later raids
- Lots of upkeep with ammo and pet food / happiness
Druid
+ Jack of all trades, master of none, default healer
+ Hard to kill
+ Least populated class
+ Good leveling experience
+ Can tank dungeons easily, raids you may only be an off tank
- Healers by default but the worst ones, plus no out-of-combat rez
- Can DPS as a cat but requires serious dedication and extra time to be good
- Balance druids are basically useless, don't bother
Shaman
+ Horde only
+ Great healers though mostly chain heal spam, sought after, default
+ Good leveling
+ Super bursty PVP
+ Great utility with many totems
- DPS specs weak at end game, you won't see many DPS shamans
- Totem playstyle definitely isn't for everyone, lots to remember
Paladin
+ Alliance only
+ Great healers, default
+ Super hard to kill
+ Lots of handy buffs
- One of the worst leveling experiences, mostly auto-attack
- You won't catch them tanking raids
- DPS at endgame also very weak even with lots of effort
When I use "default" below, that's because every class (except warrior) has one role they're "supposed" to fill. Vanilla was designed that way. You can choose other roles with some classes but they are generally all significantly weaker and you might have to find a guild willing to take you on in this role.
Of course this is all very rough and vague and if you're interested in a class there's plenty of places you can find deeper dives into each one.
Warrior
+ Default tanks, always wanted for groups
+ Top tier DPS
+ Godlike in BGs with a healer friend
- Overpopulated
- Worst leveling experience, very gear dependent
- Worst duellers
Priest
+ Default healers, always sought after
+ Excellent in BGs and duels, Mind Control is the most fun ability in the game
+ High tier leveling with wands and spirit tap
+ One of the only classes to wear full tier sets as BiS, epic questline for staff
- Many people rolling priest
- Shadow isn't great at end game, may be hard to find raid spots as one
Rogue
+ Top tier DPS
+ Great in PVP
+ Lockpicking utility, pickpocketing for gold farming
+ Wears much of their tier sets as BiS
- Lots of rogues
- Fierce gear competition
- Not great leveling outside of stealthing to quest mobs at the back of caves
Mage
+ Top tier DPS
+ Great in PVP
+ Great utility - portals, food and water
+ Great gold farmers
+ Top tier leveling especially with AOE farming
- Super boring PVE rotations (frostbolt spam)
- Very overpopulated
- Very squishy (glass cannon class)
Warlock
+ Good DPS
+ Fun in PVP (fear)
+ Good utility - summoning, healthstones, water breathing
+ 2nd easiest leveling experience
+ Practically free level 40 mount
- Will need to spend time before raids farming soul shards
- Tier sets look great but aren't good until T3
- Pretty boring playstyle in raids (shadowbolt spam)
Hunter
+ Probably the highest skill ceiling in vanilla, learn to move and shoot and weave and you'll be great
+ Best leveling experience bar none and thus best class for new players
+ Good in PVP if you know what to do
+ Great gold farmers
+ Fun PVE playstyle/rotation
+ Wears every tier set in full as BiS
- Lowest skill floor, will be a lot of bad hunters, you'll need to make yourself stand out
- DPS is good for a while but drops off hard in later raids
- Lots of upkeep with ammo and pet food / happiness
Druid
+ Jack of all trades, master of none, default healer
+ Hard to kill
+ Least populated class
+ Good leveling experience
+ Can tank dungeons easily, raids you may only be an off tank
- Healers by default but the worst ones, plus no out-of-combat rez
- Can DPS as a cat but requires serious dedication and extra time to be good
- Balance druids are basically useless, don't bother
Shaman
+ Horde only
+ Great healers though mostly chain heal spam, sought after, default
+ Good leveling
+ Super bursty PVP
+ Great utility with many totems
- DPS specs weak at end game, you won't see many DPS shamans
- Totem playstyle definitely isn't for everyone, lots to remember
Paladin
+ Alliance only
+ Great healers, default
+ Super hard to kill
+ Lots of handy buffs
- One of the worst leveling experiences, mostly auto-attack
- You won't catch them tanking raids
- DPS at endgame also very weak even with lots of effort
AV
We ain't outta here in ten minutes, we won't need no rocket to fly through space
Mages are all-round amazing in Classic, the only downsides (as I wrote above) are that there's going to be a lot of them to compete with, and if you plan on raiding you're gonna be pressing basically 1 button for the entirety of MC.
AV
We ain't outta here in ten minutes, we won't need no rocket to fly through space
Played the stress test as soon as it launched - managed to get into after 10-15 mins in the queue and here's some stuff I noticed, one thing in particular is huge:
"no achievements wtf?"
"why cant i move and shoot"
"everything takes so long"
- Dynamic respawns are in! They've confirmed it now but it was obvious already, enemies in the starting zones will respawn within a few seconds to alleviate some of the pressure. This is how it was back in original WoW, Mark Kern already made that clear on a stream, they've gone and found a bug that stopped it from happening. I could stand and kill the same boar over and over and actually get my quests done. This is great.
- As such, people leveled up way quicker than expected and moved out of the starter zones faster. This combined with layering meant that there were plenty of people in each zone to make it feel lively, but after the initial first hour shitshow, things were way calmer. If you're anxious about not being able to play straight away on release, I wouldn't worry.
- You get your capital's flight path unlocked from the start without going there.
- You can't skin stuff in the starting area. This combined with the dynamic respawns has totally changed my game plan of going from Orc to Tauren start zones at launch, it's just not worth it. Private servers had it very wrong again.
"no achievements wtf?"
"why cant i move and shoot"
"everything takes so long"
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llien
Member
AV
Very surprised to read that warrior is somehow a top tier DPS.
I played classic and then most of BC, big part of it as RL.
Guild lacked people (language barrier), so we would let whoever is there into 40 men raids.
I had one dps warrior, who was pretty skilled, it must be said, who would wear rogue outfit (cause nothing high end for dps warriors), and, lacking any aggro reduction capabilities, would very often anger the boss, who would one hit kill him, so that healers wouldn't even notice.
Priests were great all around healers, druids had much stronger Heal over Time spells, palladins had cheaper direct spells and, at times invaluable.
Overall, any aid which would not have all 3 of them, would be gravely lacking, as many spells had class specific cooldowns.
On DPS side of things, there was quite a bit of intra class competition. It was so fierce, that bolts where flying towards boss before main tank even hit a boss.
DPS charts, at the end of the day, looked like:
Rogues and Hunters consistently with ungodly DPS (beastmaster hunter was is also helluva easy to level)
followed by Mages (only frost/fire, depending on the dungeon) Warlocks
The gap was not big enough to make definite "that class dishes out more DPS" conclusion.
PS
By the way, Hunters also have epic quest to get an epic bow. (started with the same drop, Majordomo in Molten Core)
AV
We ain't outta here in ten minutes, we won't need no rocket to fly through space
Very surprised to read that warrior is somehow a top tier DPS.
I played classic and then most of BC, big part of it as RL.
Guild lacked people (language barrier), so we would let whoever is there into 40 men raids.
I had one dps warrior, who was pretty skilled, it must be said, who would wear rogue outfit (cause nothing high end for dps warriors), and, lacking any aggro reduction capabilities, would very often anger the boss, who would one hit kill him, so that healers wouldn't even notice.
Priests were great all around healers, druids had much stronger Heal over Time spells, palladins had cheaper direct spells and, at times invaluable.
Overall, any aid which would not have all 3 of them, would be gravely lacking, as many spells had class specific cooldowns.
On DPS side of things, there was quite a bit of intra class competition. It was so fierce, that bolts where flying towards boss before main tank even hit a boss.
DPS charts, at the end of the day, looked like:
Rogues and Hunters consistently with ungodly DPS (beastmaster hunter was is also helluva easy to level)
followed by Mages (only frost/fire, depending on the dungeon) Warlocks
The gap was not big enough to make definite "that class dishes out more DPS" conclusion.
PS
By the way, Hunters also have epic quest to get an epic bow. (started with the same drop, Majordomo in Molten Core)
Yeah, basically what's happened since 2004 is that people have crunched the numbers so hard on Vanilla WoW over 15 years of private servers that the game is basically "solved" at this point in terms of who does what best, i.e. everyone knows the optimal gear, talents and rotations.
Still, knowing all that is often only half the battle. You still need to get 40 half-decent, prepared people together at specific times each week. And even with the sense of mystery gone, it's gonna be fun to tackle vanilla content with a 2019 mindset and not endlessly wipe on trash in MC.
demented waffle
Member
Funny video on classic pvp vs bfa. Not quite true, but funny.
SIAP.
SIAP.
Kathanan
Member
RokkanStoned
Member
2 English PvP realms in EU? R.I.P. That's a fucking disaster unless Classic tanks.
AV
We ain't outta here in ten minutes, we won't need no rocket to fly through space
Yeah, 2 is absurdly low. I imagine on name reservation day both servers will get filled to capacity immediately and Blizz will open some more up, probably extend reservation. They're seriously underestimating how many people want Classic. On the Rddit survey alone there were enough EUPVP people to fill up one of those servers, and that's just the people who bothered to fill out a fucking Reddit survey.
Still, in better news, stress test is open all weekend! As long as you have an active sub, play to your heart's content.
Still, in better news, stress test is open all weekend! As long as you have an active sub, play to your heart's content.
JohnSpartanLee
Member
5 hours to go...
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AV
We ain't outta here in ten minutes, we won't need no rocket to fly through space
Thanks to whichever mod changed hype to OT.
So, everyone get their names? I got the main one I wanted on Shazzrah EU-PVP and then couldn't be bothered snagging more. A guild I'm thinking of rolling with will either be on Shaz or Golemagg.
So, everyone get their names? I got the main one I wanted on Shazzrah EU-PVP and then couldn't be bothered snagging more. A guild I'm thinking of rolling with will either be on Shaz or Golemagg.
JohnSpartanLee
Member
Got Lancelot (Human Warrior) but Thrawn and Morgana were already taken so I had to settle for Thrâwn (Orc Warrior) and Morgána (female Undead Warlock).
edit: In the meantime I deleted Thrâwn again and got Thrawn on a different realm.
edit: In the meantime I deleted Thrâwn again and got Thrawn on a different realm.
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Malakhov
Banned
You can use accents and bypass?
JohnSpartanLee
Member
Yep no problem - that always worked.
Malakhov
Banned
Nice! Will have to create them again then! Thanks!
Poordevil
Member
Blizzard underestimated the amount of players for the original World of Warcraft launch, big time. There was no digital distribution, you had to have a hard copy. Right after launch they were all sold out. Took me over a week, maybe 2, of looking everywhere to finally get lucky and find one. Then once I was in game there were problems with overloaded servers. Lag was making the game almost unplayable. One day a week, like Monday or Tuesday, Blizzard shut the game down for server maintenance. The game ran great right after that, for a couple of days, but by Friday lag was back as bad as before and stayed bad until maintenance day. I remember players on the Blizzard forum crying about having to pay a subscription, while not being able to play the game because the servers were down. The WoW launch must have been hell for Blizzard, even if they were getting rich, lol.
Malakhov
Banned
I remember that, they gave us some free time to compensate.
AV
We ain't outta here in ten minutes, we won't need no rocket to fly through space
Yeah, I've been reading a book by one of the original developers and they didn't even think they'd ever reach 500k subs during the game's life. This time round it looks more like they've misunderstood their audience - the two English EU PVP servers are now listed as "full", same with other PVP servers I've heard. They'll absolutely need 1 or 2 more per region, I don't know how they thought there would be an equal amount of people going PVP and PVE when one is missing such a huge component of the game.
AV
We ain't outta here in ten minutes, we won't need no rocket to fly through space
Update: Third English EU PVP realm being added tonight - https://eu.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/new-wow-classic-realm-coming/69910
Yeah, we needed it. Maybe even one more would help. The two big guilds to watch out for are Method for obvious fan base reasons, and APES, who will make life a living hell for the Horde wherever they roll. Ideally we'll be able to avoid both with the option of a third server.
Also, Blizzard, you absolute bastards, I'm watching the new Tarantino tonight. As if you'd announce registration on the same day. Fuckers.
Yeah, we needed it. Maybe even one more would help. The two big guilds to watch out for are Method for obvious fan base reasons, and APES, who will make life a living hell for the Horde wherever they roll. Ideally we'll be able to avoid both with the option of a third server.
Also, Blizzard, you absolute bastards, I'm watching the new Tarantino tonight. As if you'd announce registration on the same day. Fuckers.
cucuchu
Member
Any specific server a lot of GAF players plan on playing? (NA) My current WoW friends are planning on playing Herod horde but seeing as how I have spent all of WoW as a horde undead priest, it would be nice to have a change of pace and go alliance. Either I'll be playing horde shaman (resto) or alliance paladin (holy).
Didn't get to register my name, don't have active sub, I'll take a gamble when I give it a try in september. I do miss vanilla but I feel it's just nostalgia. I was ok at leveling and had few 60s but I was a kid back then, can't imagine having fixed time to raid 3-4 times a week these days, taking forever to gear up because of drop rate and competition in raid, farming for flasks, gold for mounts and all extra shit, damn, kinda hyping myself out of even playing it lol
Poordevil
Member
What if this really takes off? If it launches and goes into orbit, becoming among the top 3 subscription based MMOs on the market? Would Blizzard support the game by creating all new expansions for it? That would be wild. Learning from past missteps, take the game in a whole different direction from the original WoW.
knightfolk
Member
Hey all,
The Wife wants to get back into WoW now that classic is out. I have not built a PC in eight years, so if someone could check my build out that would be very helpful.
Requirements:
We have 32 inch 4K freesync BenQ monitors that we use for work from home, so I would like to run at 4K 60ish.
Wife said to make it look like unicorn vomit and under $2k each.
I would like room for at least one VR headset. I was thinking of the rift S.
pcpartpicker.com
Thanks in advance.
The Wife wants to get back into WoW now that classic is out. I have not built a PC in eight years, so if someone could check my build out that would be very helpful.
Requirements:
We have 32 inch 4K freesync BenQ monitors that we use for work from home, so I would like to run at 4K 60ish.
Wife said to make it look like unicorn vomit and under $2k each.
I would like room for at least one VR headset. I was thinking of the rift S.
System Builder
pcpartpicker.com
Thanks in advance.
That's a doomsday scenario to me.
The only real appeal that this has is that it's a static, fixed moment in time. Gear will never get outdated. Classes will never be rebalanced and ruined. You'll never have the rug pulled out from under you. That's the only appealing thing about this.
If you want a continual round of changes that may or may not fuck the game, you might as well just keep playing the latest version of WOW.
You can only really have one retro realm. Even doing BC and WOTLK realms would ruin it because it isn't just a fixed pocket of content that ends but instead just a glorified Diablo season where you end up in the same final place (latest retail). This is also why I wish they would have picked at least BC instead of vanilla, because honestly, BC is basically everything good about vanilla and fewer of the things that were bad about it.
gifgaf
Member
If it gets popular I expect them to add micro-transactions and daily quests. Fuck it, I expect them to add those anyway popular or not. Enjoy it while you got it folks, it wont last forever.
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Helios
Member
I doubt it. The moment they add any of those the population will plummet. I think they're aware that the reason people want to play Vanilla is because it doesn't have those "features".
Nethernova
Member
ive tried playing retail until classic comes back but i just cant 
everything just feels so soulless. TO ME. TO. ME.
everything just feels so soulless. TO ME. TO. ME.
Malakhov
Banned
Same here, tried with 2 characters and stopped at lvl 7.ive tried playing retail until classic comes back but i just cant
Malakhov
Banned
Will never happen, there's the easy servers for that.
They'll start adding expansions someday but not anytime soon.
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FCKAFD
Member
Probably wont run since your hardware is too new. WoW came out in 2004 if i remember correctly so id go to ebay and buy a 2004 pcHey all,
The Wife wants to get back into WoW now that classic is out. I have not built a PC in eight years, so if someone could check my build out that would be very helpful.
Requirements:
We have 32 inch 4K freesync BenQ monitors that we use for work from home, so I would like to run at 4K 60ish.
Wife said to make it look like unicorn vomit and under $2k each.
I would like room for at least one VR headset. I was thinking of the rift S.
System Builder
Thanks in advance.
llien
Member
Hey all,
The Wife wants to get back into WoW now that classic is out. I have not built a PC in eight years, so if someone could check my build out that would be very helpful.
Requirements:
We have 32 inch 4K freesync BenQ monitors that we use for work from home, so I would like to run at 4K 60ish.
Wife said to make it look like unicorn vomit and under $2k each.
I would like room for at least one VR headset. I was thinking of the rift S.
System Builder
Thanks in advance.
Vega64 did about 48 average, 45 "1% min" in WoW tests, 5700XT Pulse is about 20% faster than Vega64 (across a bunch of games)
Note that classic is less demanding, besides, you have option to dowscale "a bit" (i.e. not jump from 4k to 1440p, but go for 90% of 4k) if you feel it's not fast enough.
WoW is very CPU intenstive, but 3700x rocks.
Don't forget to use AMD's "anti-lag".
PS
Wraith Prism cooler is included with 3700x. It is quite colorful, you probably don't have to spend $139 on another:
no hard need to go with 570 mainboard either.
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AV
We ain't outta here in ten minutes, we won't need no rocket to fly through space
It makes zero sense to do TBC first without doing Vanilla when so many people want both. It's near guaranteed that if Classic is successful (which honestly it already is), TBC will be next. They'd be mad not too. But tons of people will never want to play TBC because flying completely killed world PVP off. Battlegrounds did some damage but once you have flying in BC, WPVP is over.
They'll never force all the vanilla servers to TBC because otherwise the cycle will begin again with people demanding their game back. What they'll do instead is open up TBC servers that people can copy their characters too while retaining them on the vanilla "museum" servers.
Not sure if just trolling but A. the 2004 client runs on any new PC and B. they're using the new client anyway.
Helios
Member
I saw the thumbnail and I immediately knew the video
Here's one, hope it wasn't posted already.
12 years old
It's FCKAFD. He's trolling.
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AV
We ain't outta here in ten minutes, we won't need no rocket to fly through space
I doubt Activision would even have a hand in it, honestly. They've been incredibly hands off with Classic so far. Hell, they even let Blizzard roll the subscriptions into one. I think they've been warned that Classic is only successful until they start injecting it with awful MTX shit and the like.
You play the beta? Or watch any? World PVP is gonna be bigger in Classic than ever before. Even in the low level stress tests we were forming up multiple raids on low level enemy zones just for fun.
Basically every poll they take on the Classic WoW subreddit (I know, I know, I literally only use that one and can stop soon) regarding this has something like a 60/40 split on moving to TBC and the number 1 cited reason for not wanting to is flying. Every time someone made a "theoretical TBC redux" thread, the top response was "same game no flying". Obviously it only affects PVP servers but the clear majority of Classic players are rolling on those.
Anyway, all that's irrelevant, the point is it would've been super weird to do TBC first without vanilla just because a lot of people prefer it. Hell, I do, I intend to play the shit outta TBC Classic if (when) it launches.
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DunDunDunpachi
Patient MembeR
lol at people pre-loading/pre-paying to secure their name on the server of choice.