Hey Warmane community! Here's my two cents on the topics of discussion, and the confirmed information we've gotten. It's a long post, so I've tried to format it to make it digestible. Let's go!
Talents: Will reflect the expansion that is current on the realm. Vanilla content = Vanilla talents, etc.Spoiler:Show
I see lots of pros and cons to this one. On one hand, Wrath talents/specs add lots of variety, identity, and completeness to the classes in the game. Without them, there are nowhere near 27 viable specs in the game. Lots are simply lacking. Looking at you, Ret Paladin, Arcane Mage, yadda yadda etc.
On the other hand, it will be cool to have something fresh and different! Yes, sure, I’ve played through Vanilla endgame before, but it’s certainly been a while. It’ll be fun to play something different from 3.3.5a, at least for a while.
Another piece of info that hasn’t been touched on in this thread is how much WORK it would be to retune every single class, given 3.3.5 talents, for a level 60 meta. That’s an almost innumerable volume of possible combinations to work through, for a ‘balanced’ endgame experience, and would only have to be redone at level 70, if the 3.3.5 talents were to stay. It’s a Herculean effort, and frankly, that’s ridiculous to ask of the developers.
Overall, yeah 3.3.5a is the sweet spot that we all know and love, but I’m down with this. Vanilla's fun too.
Marketplace: To elaborate on what we said on the main post, the plan is to have item releases similar to Frostmourne, but the items will be available sooner. This means that the top guilds will be able to clear the content and get their achievements and whatnot without the assistance of the shop, but the items will arrive sooner on the shop than they did on Frostmourne.Spoiler:Show
I’m cool with this! I’m not pretentious (or daft) enough to think that I know better than the developers, moderators, and staff how to financially run a WoW realm. If this is the best choice, financially, for the realm’s longterm health, I’m all for it.
It STILL allows the top PvE guilds to compete with one another for progression, before the items become available for purchase. Yes, the rest of the playerbase will have to ‘contend’ with items purchased with real money, after content has been cleared. No, it’s not a dealbreaker, or even a big deal at all. You’re playing here for free. Why not donate some yourself? Would you rather pay 15$/month?
B.Elfs and Draenei: Disabled until TBC content.Spoiler:Show
Now this one is a bummer. I’m not a paladin, or a shaman player myself, but I fear that this will contribute negatively to the racial imbalance already present in Vanilla. Racials haven’t been announced for pre-wotlk content, but it’s no mystery that they’re not exactly ‘fairly distributed.’ Even for WotLK content, they’re quite skewed. Looking at you, Troll Berserking, Shadowmeld, or Every Man For Himself.
Again, this isn’t a deal breaker for me. I’ll still play, and I’d imagine most folks will as well. The ones I worry about are the Blood Elf Paladin mains, and the Draenei Shaman mains. This is going to hurt their desire to play at all, as they’ll be forced to either find a new community of people to play with, or change their class completely.
This does raise a question about Mercenary Mode in battlegrounds. Will Shamans/Paladins with Mercenary Mode enabled be able to get the opposite side? I’d imagine they would.
Though it’s not for me to know, I do wonder about the reasoning for this decision. There must be an upside that I’m not seeing, but I can’t think of it.
RDF: Will be enabled with Vanilla.Spoiler:Show
Another bummer for me, personally, but not a big deal. If this is in the best interest of the realm as a whole, I’m all for it as well. Yes, I ENJOY forming dungeon groups and traveling to dungeons, but I’ll be fine just hittitng Queue, like everyone else.
I would like to know more information on how this will work at level 60 though, with things like Stratholme Key to the City, BRD Shadowforge Key, or Scholomance Skeleton Key. Presumably you'll need to have these to access the dungeons?
Dual-Spec: Will be enabled with Vanilla.Spoiler:Show
This is great! Though the 1000 gold will take quite a while in Vanilla, this is exciting. I’ll be able to PvP AND PvE, or Tank and Heal, etc.
Debuff limit: Will not be enforced on Vanilla.Spoiler:Show
This is great, and expected. DoT classes need this, of course, and it would also be a strange thing to implement, developmentally. An artificial, FIFO structured data buffer for debuffs, to simply be removed when TBC launches. That’d be just…. weird. Good change, imo.
Level cap: Will be level 60 on the Beta realm.Spoiler:Show
Cool! Expected as well. Will leveling on the beta realm be the 5x, and will we start at level 1? So we’ll level 5x up till 60?
Raid sizes: 40-man raids will be 25-man instead.Spoiler:Show
Another great change, imo! 40 just feels so large and difficult to manage. Though I imagine there will be some folks unhappy with how this affects the experience, I think 25m raids over 40m raids will entice far more players than it will repel.
Now, for the other hot topics that seem to be present in the thread…
Experience rate 5x
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This is another that falls under the category of “bummer, but not a deal breaker.” Yes, I personally enjoy leveling. Yes, I would prefer lower rates. However, this ultimately is not a large decision either way. On 1x rates, leveling to 60 takes roughly a week of playtime. Ten days if one plays very leisurely. Using the ten days as a benchmark, dividing the time by 5 to account for 5x rates would get it to two days of /played time, even while leveling slowly. Yes, there’s a bit of overhead for more frequent travel, and zone transitions because of the heightened rate, but this really isn’t super impactful, especially with RDF.
These aren’t large amounts of time, in the long run. We all want a healthy realm 6 months from now. We all want a healthy realm one year from now. The difference between ten days and two days with regard to leveling is miniscule! The VAST majority of playtime on EVERYONE’S characters is at the level cap, even in Vanilla. If 5x rates are the trade-off for a higher playerbase in the long term, let’s do it.
I will gladly throw my vote in for lower rates, like 3x (my preference would be 1x), but I’m going to play either way.
Yes, I have a job. Yes, WoW is not my life’s focus. Implying that anyone who wants lower rates is somehow a bum outside of the game is pompous and silly. Some folks just enjoy different things. I'd love 3x or 1x, but still, not a deal-breaker.
Racial Bonuses
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No concrete information has been provided on this yet, but it seems to be a large topic of debate. This actually DOES have the potential to discourage players from the realm, as it feeds heavily into faction imbalance. If the racials of one faction outweigh the other, it creates a domino effect where large swathes of players will swap to the faction with the ‘good’ racials, which thusly encourages more and more players to swap to whichever side has the large base.
One of the suggestions thus far was to implement the ability to select your racial, irrespective of your chosen race. This could be an option, but it would be a semi-major custom feature. The reason I don’t personally like this change is the way it affects PvP, most notably in Arenas (during TBC and Wrath phases). Knowing that a Night Elf player can Shadowmeld an incoming spell, and a Human player cannot is a large part of the game.
Additonally, it’s yet another custom feature that would stack more work on the shoulders of the development team.
Another option is to implement the racials, per-expansion, as they were originally. This is likely my least favorite of the options. Racial abilities, particularly in Vanilla and TBC, are super lopsided in their affect on gameplay. Some are game-changing levels of powerful, like TBC Human perception or Undead WotF, while others are utterly useless, like the original pre-Wrath Stoneform. Taking the time to implement each racial for other expansions, in the interest of historical accuracy, only for them to be deliberately unfair seems like a bad choice.
Another option is to simply leave the racials as they are in 3.3.5a. This one likely requires the least amount of work, as they’re already that way in the client. These racials have also proven to be the most balanced of the original, Blizzard-released iterations. Honestly, this would be fine with me.
My suggestion would be to modify the Wrath racials minorly, and apply them to all of the expansion phases. Examples are as follows. These are just suggestions though!
- Every Man For Himself - Leave it alone. The issue here is the availability of 284 trinkets in Arena. The racial, by itself, is fine.
- Bererking - Change this from 20% haste to 10% haste. It’ll still be arguably the strongest in PvE, but it won’t be so drastic.
- WotF - Remove the 45s cooldown with Medallion. This will bring it up to par with Stoneform and EMfH.
- Gift of the Naaru - Just increase the heal number. This racial is hard to balance without completely reworking it.
- Shadowmeld - Another difficult one. I guess leave it alone. Making it unusable in comabt essentially deletes it completely.
The other issue highlighted by the racials is their skew towards PvP usefulness. Save for Troll, and kinda Orc and Draenei, they're all PvP-themed in 3.3.5. There's a big incentive for PvP players to all go Alliance, and PvE players to all go Horde. It'd be awesome to modify this.
PvP vs PvE Realm
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This is the big one for me. This is the one that has the potential to discourage the most players from playing the server at all. I strongly believe that a PvE realm has a lower stake for longterm health than a PvP realm.
I’ll concede that, as always, the developers surely know better than I do. Still, I don’t see how a PvE realm could be better, 6 months to one year from now.
There are three ‘camps’ of players that play World of Warcraft, seemingly.
- There are PvE players, who exclusively enjoy raiding, dungeoning, and soloing. They don’t have any interest in PvP, but they enjoy the rest of the entirety of what the game has to offer. I don’t have statistics to back the claim, but this seems to be the largest portion of the overall playerbase. Henceforth referred to as “PvE guys.”
- There are PvP players, who exclusively enjoy Arenas, Battlegrounds, and World PvP. They don’t have any interest in PvE. They want to fight other players, and some of them even want to effortlessly slaughter defenseless low-level players. Henceforth referred to as “PvP guys.”
- There are players who like both ‘sides’ of the WoW coin. They like raiding with their guild, and they also like fighting other players. They enjoy battlegrounds, dungeons, soloing, and World PvP. This is likely the smallest subset of players, but they certainly do exist. Henceforth referred to as “Both guys.”
‘PvE guys’ are going to play, regardless of having to fight other players from time to time. At level 60, fighting groups of other people outside of Blackrock mountain, in Burning Steppes or Searing Gorge is not going to make the PvE guys quit the game. Getting attacked in Silithus, while questing, or setting up for AQ is not going to make the PvE guys never log in to the game. They’ll fight back, win or lose, potentially get frustrated, and they’ll go on with their time. They’ll still raid. They’ll still dungeon. They’ll still solo. Their enjoyable content is still going to be included in the game.
‘PvP guys’ are not like this. If a PvP guy is unable to fight other players out in the world, particularly if they don’t enjoy Battlegrounds, they don’t have anything else to do. The game’s content that they enjoy is completely disincluded. This would be akin to a PvE player getting to max level, only for all raiding content to be disabled. They just wouldn’t have anything to do that they personally enjoy, outside of dueling.
‘Both guys’ are easy to please. If something is removed, they’ve still got everything else they can do, that they enjoy. I personallly fall into this category. I like everything WoW has to offer.
I think a PvP realm is perfectly fine. Do I get annoyed when a max level ganks me? Yeah, sure. I know that they’re just having fun their way though. It’s at my expense, but oh well. I’m not entitled to decree how they enjoy themselves. I run to my body, and then I try to have fun playing cat-and-mouse avoiding the max level guy. I really don’t mind.
What I DO mind is the removing the ability of players who ONLY enjoy PvP to indulge in the game. These players simply won’t play, if they can't PvP. It will decrease the health of the server, in the long run. There will be fewer players. We all know what happens when an exodus from a realm begins. Domino effect kicks in, and everyone trickles out.
I’m going to play either way, but I’ve got friends on both sides of the coin. The PvP players have told me that if they can’t wPvP, they’re going to wait until TBC to join, when Arenas get implemented. It’s a bummer, but I can’t fault my friends for what they enjoy doing.
A compromise has been suggested. Something akin to only allowing PvP in high level zones, while disabling it elsewhere. This WILL discourage the folks that enjoy ganking low-levels, so I don’t fully support this. I want EVERYONE (yes, even gankers) to be able to enjoy the game. I don’t know anyone who gets ganked on their alt and quits the game entirely. I DO know people who won't play at all without PvP enabld.
Still, I do think a compromise like this is WAYYYY better than disabling PvP altogether. I really like max level PvP, and I’m pumped to go out to Searing Gorge and fight people at level 60. That’s going to be great!
I definitely vote for a PvP realm, or some sort of hybrid PvP/PvE realm. Vanilla without endgame world PvP is a huge letdown for me, and I strongly believe it would negatively affect population numbers, long-term.
Phew! Thank you so much if you read this far!
I know that Warmane will deliver an excellent experience, as always. Thank you, staff, for the informative post.
I'd like to encourage everyone to try out the beta, and give as much feedback as possible! The more information they get from us, the better.
Let's go!!!!
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Member
Hey Warmane community! Here's my two cents on the topics of discussion, and the confirmed information we've gotten. It's a long post, so I've tried to format it to make it digestible. Let's go!
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Now, for the other hot topics that seem to be present in the thread…
Experience rate 5x
Spoiler:Show
Racial Bonuses
Spoiler:Show
PvP vs PvE Realm
Spoiler:Show
Phew! Thank you so much if you read this far!
I know that Warmane will deliver an excellent experience, as always. Thank you, staff, for the informative post.
I'd like to encourage everyone to try out the beta, and give as much feedback as possible! The more information they get from us, the better.
Let's go!!!!
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Member
Everything is great, but I still want to ask the same question. Why do you want to make a bot friendly server. Don't you think more bots on the server will discourage normal people? Why don't you want to do exp as I proposed? You can even do x8, but let it be a human server, not a bot.
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Member
Any changes to the vanilla pvp system ?
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Member
Why do all working and family people who want to see x5 rates think that they are the only ones who work and spend more time with their families. Maybe it's time to remember that WoW (early versions) is still an MMORPG which implies a waste of a large amount of time? This is not a session game like on retail rn. If you are not ready to spend enough time for WoW, maybe you shouldn't play an MMORPG? In my opinion, if x1 rates will alienate some of the players, then x5 will alienate more than x1. We need a compromise x2/3, no more. In addition to this, if there are additional quests on the server that were added after Vanilla. This will help save time on leveling, besides, do not forget about the RDF and double experience from the bonus rest. As a result, we will get a maximum of 3d playing time for leveling. When playing 4 hours in evening after work, in casual mode, this is about a little more than two weeks. This is very fast for vanilla. And this is the average speed. Im sure we will see first 60 in first week or in few days after release.
And I also want to remind you that the game in vanilla starts at level 1, and not just from level 60. I understand that opinions may differ.
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Member
I think this changes are perfect and yes x5 is great for those who want x1 go play clasic era :)
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Member
yah,,x3 i good deal,,,
yah,,x3 i good deal,,,
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Member
The only thing that stops bots are active GMs. Enabling PVP to harass bots might be fun for you, but doesn't really stop the bot...the bot has a dozen other instances running, and while you're slowing down (not stopping) the one instance, the other dozen are farming away without hindrance. Report bots, Active GMs/banning, and on the dev side, detection that auto-flags possible bots for GMs to check is what stops bots.
Personally I think a hybrid PVE/PVP realm, where either certain zones (or subzones) are flagged for PVP, from standard faction PVP to Arena-style factionless PvP depending on the area/goal, is the answer. For the rest (majority) of the world, especially for the majority of leveling, is PvE. Nothing prevents you from flagging yourself if you want to PvP in a PvE zone. I also have seen the Warmode option (permanent PvP flagged, and has bonuses either to xp/rep/skill rates or whatnot) also working well if the bonuses are properly balanced, and see that being a worthwhile option to consider.
For Rates, I think 5x might be a bit high, especially for the Vanilla Phase...I hope it's just a thing for the Beta to get people leveling faster and testing a wider range of level-content (so the Beta doesn't have to last as long before we get full release). When we get to the full release, I think 2-3x is good for Current Phase content, and then when TBC releases, up the rates to 3-4x for Vanilla content, and then 5x (for Vanilla/TBC levels) when Wrath drops. This lets players that join the server progression late to "catch up" to the current game content, but maintains the leveling experience of the current tier of content.
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Member
When WoTLK phase will be released, will paladins have Seal of Blood/Seal of The Martyr till end of season 6 like on original WoTLK or will the seals be removed at the start of WoTLK?
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Member
If the exp rate is high, x5 or x7 bots will of course be more. However, I realize that most people have to go to work. Therefore, as I wrote earlier, I would like to propose an increased exp rate, after verifying the account by phone. In addition, you can increase the exp rate for the grant. Both cases will help players. I don't believe someone will verify an account just to risk getting caught for using a memo.
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Member
What's the point of no 40 man raids in vanilla?
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Member
The real question is how WM team will handle this technically, meaning belfs and draenei are part of the world, not only their starting locations but also spread around the "globe", integrated with quest lines, items and areas. Maybe leaving them alone and enable it from the start would save a lot of developers time ... but I am not a developer nor programmer, so can be wrong. Also I don't know how much they want to change the world and quests, so far they talked about talents, spells and itemization. Do they disable the start areas, race pick and everything else will be left alone ?Now this one is a bummer. I’m not a paladin, or a shaman player myself, but I fear that this will contribute negatively to the racial imbalance already present in Vanilla. Racials haven’t been announced for pre-wotlk content, but it’s no mystery that they’re not exactly ‘fairly distributed.’ Even for WotLK content, they’re quite skewed. Looking at you, Troll Berserking, Shadowmeld, or Every Man For Himself.
Anyway the decision will affect heavily people that not only want to play the class but also want to be on specific faction. If this decision stays on live server they'll be stuck in a different faction. After that on TBC will have to pay in store for a racial swap ( if enabled ), but sounds like a strange decision to spend vanilla on horde and then swap to alliance or vice versa. Anyway a big problem for people who wanted to main this race/class combination for sure.
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Member
Who is this server for? It's going to be full P2W like Icecrown and Frostmourne, as well as x5 XP rate. That immediately alienates the entire Vanilla crowd.
It's also going to be based on Vanilla classes, content, talents, etc. That immediately alienates the WotLK crowd.
So again, who is this aimed at? High rate Vanilla with a gear shop doesn't exist for a reason. If you want the Vanilla crowd, make this x1 with no gear on the shop. If you want your normal playerbase, make it WotLK. I just don't see why anyone would bother with this server, as its not catering to any group at all.
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Member
I agree for 100%!!!!!
I would like to play vanilla server with x1 rate. Also i can understand most people working, so they cant play whole day.
I suggested to make x1 exp rate. And some people could do donation for incrased exp rate for some time.
Also you could do double exp rate, or double honor in weekend.
But honestly please, dont make exp rate x5. High exp rate helping bot.
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Member
How can I enter the ONYXYA BETA??????????
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Member
do we get a seperate realm with lvl 60 premades for PvP testing?
