Onyxia: Experience the Evolution of Warcraft

[Marty666]

I just hope the talent will still be 3.3.5 .... vanilla talent really suck for a lot of class. That is only the beta.

[kukuruz]

Will be better if the realm is PVP with 1x exp.

[Guenhwyvarz]

I loved every detail so far about the announcement and FAQ, it looks great, many thanks to everyone who worked hard to make this reality.

[t0nkza]

From what i read, everyone want wotlk talants, but whats wrong the vanilla talants ? They fit perfectly you have all valieble specs. The only thing that need to be changed partly is the itemization. Make the Tiers like in tbc and wotlk. Make them with tokens and do tier for each spec. Thag will make the shamans,paladins,druids lifes easier.

[Glavniot]

You guys should use ur brain there is gonna be a ingame store which means x1 is bad for you, by the time you get to lvl 30 I will buy insta 60 on 3chars.

[t0nkza]

Too many items come with agility and intelect cloth or more like this exam. That was the problem in vanilla items for elemental,balance druid, retri pala are really limited. If you want to play that spec you can but majority of the bis are cloths and mages,locks have priority on them.

[lucasbors12]

What is quality of life features?

Wil there be achievments?

[Cabelz]

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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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.

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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?

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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.

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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?

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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.

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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.

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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?

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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!!!!

Big agree with the PvP / Player Experience point.

I dunno if I've played enough to really comment on the rest, but that one is important to consider.

[Rgtr]

vanilla only x1 rates

[lefthooked]

i agree with this. please make it no more then x3.

[Kovachut]

The Beta for this realm will be available on August 14th, 2023.

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We have applied the feedback and suggestions we received from countless players to improve and refine our realm design. Keep an eye at this section over the coming months as we will modify realm design based on Beta feedback and add more information as time passes.

This is in regard to the countless comments, where people discuss 1x, 3x, and 5x rates. Yes, Proterean welcomed you to express your feedback here, but if you really want to affect the XP rates (or sth else), just wait for the Beta to release. Based on the data the staff gathers from it, they will determine what would be adored by the community in the long term. Hell, Proterean even reiterated it on the 2nd page:

We have deliberately left some things vague for now, because we want to be flexible and responsive to your feedback during the beta process.

We do not want the community to think that we have set all things in stone as this is a new and unique experience on Warmane, and it is precisely why the name does not match our regular naming scheme we've used for years but instead it matches the naming scheme of the realm that made this private server what it is today, a name of significant boss character that appeared in Warcraft several times, Neltharion. And even the name itself is not set in stone.

This is the most interactive development experience we have ever given you, and we will pay attention to your suggestions. But we will also weigh them with our own experience of hosting realms for more than a decade. Sometimes, things and features that are not favored by the community are crucial for providing a long-term satisfying experience for everyone.


Here is an example of that difference in perspective.

We know many here will ask about the marketplace design and we can state with certainty that its presence is important for the well being of the realm. Allowing players, that do not necessarily have the time to commit, to be able to access end game content easily is one pillar of why our realms are still populated and on all our realms this is possible in different degrees and varieties.

For Onyxia, it will be a mix of Frostmourne marketplace and Icecrown marketplace. On Frostmourne, we've only ever released end game items after the respective encounters have been finished and only after a large amount of players have obtained the items considered for addition in the marketplace.

Countless threads filled with requests and tickets were ever present in our three seasons of Frostmourne asking us to add items on the marketplace but we've honored the realm design each time.

This time, we will be more lenient and put items on the marketplace sooner than on Frostmourne, but still allowing for end game guilds to shine from the rest and make a name for themselves.

We look forward to seeing you try out our beta, our development team and staff will be analyzing each moment spent on that temporary realm.

Regardless how the new realm looks like at the end, people shouldn't expect 100% pure vanilla-like experience, which would sate their nostalgia the way they are hoping for. If this sounds like a deal-breaker to some of you guys, there are other private servers which would be more to your liking.

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Now, I'd like to go a bit off-topic and express my concern about the speed with which content is consumed. I've played on Frostmourne during its three seasons (to a varying degree), and I've witnessed a gradual decline of interest after around 2 months into Ulduar. Warmane was able to collect data from this realm and enhance the WotLK experience with each season, but the aforementioned tendency remained. Onyxia is going to include Vanilla and TBC as well, which would further increase the content progression duration. I guess, the Beta version will show just how long a content phase needs to last, in order to keep a big playerbase engaged.

[Lainth]

Such a massive excitement for this realm, without any doubt it will be huge, even bigger than all your last projects. Just would like to pronounce against rates, leveling in Vanilla is really cool and a core part of the experience, rates x5 might skip that. Therefore if it is a progression realm, once we start TBC it will be too quickly going from 60 to 70. Additionally, if there are rates, there would be not so enjoyable the gear that is dropped or crafted as you level, which is essential in Vanilla.

[Duboshot]

x5 will be only on beta as a test? Or will it also transfer to the final version? I would really like it to be x1 as it is a classic and people will become even more united))

[Uldren]

From what i read, everyone want wotlk talants, but whats wrong the vanilla talants ? They fit perfectly you have all valieble specs. The only thing that need to be changed partly is the itemization. Make the Tiers like in tbc and wotlk. Make them with tokens and do tier for each spec. Thag will make the shamans,paladins,druids lifes easier.

lets see:
warlocks: 1 button class
shaman: resto very good, enha 2h pvp, ele pvp. "shield specialization" "totem mastery", unplayable in pve dps
druid: balance in pvp good, in pve is 1 button class. feral/bear: disgusting(but they are playables). resto: is the worst healer of the game
hunter: casted aimed shot is a cloth killer, but it sucks in general
warriors: the best class, but with bladestorm and titan grip will be better
mages: 1 button class, frost are really good in pvp, "wand specialization". you don't like arcane missile, deep freeze and living bomb?
paladins: best healer in classic. thats it
priest: shadow pvp really good, shadow pve 1 minute mana, very good at healer. disci ????
rogue: combat and subtle, thats it. you don't like mutilation? killing spree? shadow steps?

[Infinitecrit]

But these things are exactly what make Vanilla different from next expansions. If they make the talents same as WoTLK then what's the point of having this progressive realm? Might as well just make a WoTLK realm, like Frostmourne 4...