Talents?

[Zetox]

good, then i dont want to have old items on launch because they are less fun
i want buffed r10 items right from the start because the old r10 items are shit and unusable as pre-raid items
i want AV right from the start because waiting for the strong epic items and korrak quest rewards is no fun
not to mention majority of caster items being useless before the patch

this can go on forever like this, and once again, my opinion is, either do EVERYTHING like it was pre patched or leave it be and set it to 1.12 right from release
it just seems odd to me that people want to play classic server, but only like the very last little bit of it when it was "fixed"

"oh yeah classic was awesome! i would love to play a classic server! ...but scratch like 90% of it from release up to 1.10 because it was all shit and no fun"

Why do you want it 'all' or 'nothing' considering it's impossible to get 'all' of it back like it was?

I presumed that we were discussing things actually possible not just the historical ideal of what Blizzard Created. Is that an error?

[Askental]

I guess his point is that you have to change it all or change nothing for the experience to be correct. Otherwise, you have some sort of custom version that never existed. Chances that it will be balanced / better / fun are small.
Pretty much everyone agrees that 1.12 was the best version but all we are doing here is going away from what it was. What is so desirable about the flawed initial release anyway?

Of course it applies to items. I'd just much rather see items being gimped than entire classes close to useless for 2 years.

Some classes do need their gear though! I'm afraid this could be exactly the effect of gimped items...

[Armilus]

I guess his point is that you have to change it all or change nothing for the experience to be correct. Otherwise, you have some sort of custom version that never existed. Chances that it will be balanced / better / fun are small.
Pretty much everyone agrees that 1.12 was the best version but all we are doing here is going away from what it was. What is so desirable about the flawed initial release anyway?

Between 1.0 and 1.12 blizzard made many changes to items, talents, class skills, even core game mechanics. Many of these changes were done because they felt that some things in the game were bugged. They also made some changes to deal with other problems in the game, for example, if you started playing the game 1 year after release and wanted to join a guild that raided, it was impossible. You had shit green gear and they all had epics and were working on AQ40. This was a flaw in the way that blizzard rolled out new content. They kept adding raid content but didn't add any non-raid items to allow the non-raid or late-to-buy-the-game players to keep up.

I am 99% sure that they are NOT talking about bringing back the bugs and flawed itemization. They are talking about releasing new dungeon gear when appropriate to allow non-raiding or newer players to keep pace. In TBC and all later expansions blizzard ALWAYS added gear that could be obtained outside of raids as they released new raid content. This gear was always about 1 tier behind the latest raid content in terms of item quality. They do this for the same reason.

Doing what they are planning to do is 1000x better than releasing with all 1.12 gear so that everyone can walk through MC like it's nothing. Clearing MC in 90 minutes on your second week raiding is much farther from blizzlike than what they are proposing.

[Hatson]

I guess his point is that you have to change it all or change nothing for the experience to be correct. Otherwise, you have some sort of custom version that never existed. Chances that it will be balanced / better / fun are small.
Pretty much everyone agrees that 1.12 was the best version but all we are doing here is going away from what it was. What is so desirable about the flawed initial release anyway?

Between 1.0 and 1.12 blizzard made many changes to items, talents, class skills, even core game mechanics. Many of these changes were done because they felt that some things in the game were bugged. They also made some changes to deal with other problems in the game, for example, if you started playing the game 1 year after release and wanted to join a guild that raided, it was impossible. You had shit green gear and they all had epics and were working on AQ40. This was a flaw in the way that blizzard rolled out new content. They kept adding raid content but didn't add any non-raid items to allow the non-raid or late-to-buy-the-game players to keep up.

I am 99% sure that they are NOT talking about bringing back the bugs and flawed itemization. They are talking about releasing new dungeon gear when appropriate to allow non-raiding or newer players to keep pace. In TBC and all later expansions blizzard ALWAYS added gear that could be obtained outside of raids as they released new raid content. This gear was always about 1 tier behind the latest raid content in terms of item quality. They do this for the same reason.

Doing what they are planning to do is 1000x better than releasing with all 1.12 gear so that everyone can walk through MC like it's nothing. Clearing MC in 90 minutes on your second week raiding is much farther from blizzlike than what they are proposing.

Pretty much sums up how I feel about it. I don't understand why people are so against this, and so "afraid" of this. The whole "all or nothing" mentality doesn't really make sense to me. If we can make the server more blizzlike in any way, without it ruining the game or going back to 3000 latency in MC and abilities that simply don't function at all - then I don't see why not.

I truly believe these item changes will improve the experience. Sure, everyone will be a lesser version on themselves at the start, but.. that's progression for you. I don't see how having not-as-good-items will kill the game for anyone, especially if it affects everyone, and not specifically just you. (Unlike the talent & class revamp progression, which I believe would legit harm a lot of classes for 1-2 years, and do nothing but upset people, just like it did back then on retail).

[Hatson]

Some classes do need their gear though! I'm afraid this could be exactly the effect of gimped items...

I play an Enhancement, Askental. I know how gear dependency feels. Again: The item change will affect everyone, at the same time. It doesn't pick and choose which class should be shit tier for 2 years and which shouldn't. It doesn't choose favouritism over others.
I don't see why people would whine as much about their items being bad, when everyone experiences it, and if I ever saw a non-hybrid complainin' - I'd just laugh at them. Like seriously, how can you complain then.

I truly believe this will improve the early months though, especially. It's much more balanced and fair than talent & class revamps favouritism, and all the broken game mechanics of old WoW where DR didn't exist and a ton of abilities flat out didn't work, simply broken mechanics, and tons of lag. None of those things would be fun for people, or in the least; improve the experience in any way.

[James Goblin]

Changing talents back (and then changing them ˝forth˝) would be practically (man-hour wise) impossible, as already explained few times, making discussion about that pretty sterile. Developers are certainly not even considering it.

Speaking of items, we can argue pro et contra pre-1.12 endlessly, there are arguments on both sides so it is basically voting. For example, I vote for pre - 1.12 =)

[Hatson]

James, I'm not trying to discuss a reason for talent revamps. I'm comparing the item stat progression to other Vanilla retail progressions and changes through the patches. Because there are people on the forums who want "all or nothing" in terms of progression content. Not just dungeons, not just items. But also everything else it seems.
I'm simply talking about how of all the things that could be changed, the item progression is a lot less of an offender than most of the old Vanilla retail stuff.
Like I said, I doubt people want to be back to 3k latency, broken abilities, broken mechanics, no DR system, 1:1 only spell scalings, AP normalization, non-functional spells and talents, bugged dungeons and bosses, client glitches, server crashing, etc (ironically a lot of those things are common on private servers and will definitely be a factor in-game, haha)- Of all the things to "bring back", the item progression is the least of the offenders in terms of "fun" for the community.
At least that's what I believe. Some here seem to disagree. But to each their own.

[James Goblin]

Hatson, I just wanted to say that talents will (and should BTW, but thats controversial) remain 1.12, nothing more. Meantime, we seem to agree on everything!?

PS totally offtopic, but maybe the only point of disagreement would be the term Shaman class revamp. Back in the days I referred to it not as revamp but as ˝revamp˝ or ˝lolrevamp˝ - that is, when I was in good mood, using much less polite expressions meantime To ad insult to injury, it came together with (one of) Windfury nerfs IIRC

[Hatson]

You mean when they fixed Windfury proc'ing off itself?
That was before Naxxramas (where they revamped Shamans and their Talents).

[James Goblin]

I would have to do bit of digging to reconstruct which one precisely, twas long time ago. There was more than one, including ninja-nerfs. I vaguely recollect discussing WF nerf together with new - or back then upcoming!? - ˝revamp˝.