Heroic Azshara Down!

We finally got Heroic Azshara down! It's a pretty good fight. It feels crazily chaotic at first, but as you repeat it, it becomes more and more tractable. A good fight for seeing and mastering phase by phase.

It also feels like a fight where, as individuals get a handle on mechanics, especially decrees, it seems to stabilize for everyone else as well. Decrees are orders from Azshara to soak a mechanic, stay moving, stand still, group up, or be solo. Then you get 2 random ones in heroic. It's very hard at first because everyone is running around like a chicken with their head cut off. But then people start to move predictably, and it becomes easier for people with the more complicated combinations.

Oct 2019 Updates

Posting dropped off a cliff in the last two weeks. Let's see if I can do better this month.

World of Warcraft

I finished getting the Nazjatar companions up to level 30, and have basically stopped doing Nazjatar. I'm now working on getting the level 3 Azerite Essences from Mechagon.

It's weird, but I like Nazjatar better than Mechagon, but I'm not really too sure why. Possibly because flying in Nazjatar is less annoying than Mechagon. Or possibly Mechagon feels the same every time you go to it. Get chests, kill Rustfeather, do quests in the same area. Nazjatar felt a little bit more varied. Or perhaps it was easier to skip the parts of Nazjatar that you disliked.

Like all of the Alliance, I'm also working on the Bee mount. My current plan is just to kill Honey Smasher and do an event if it pops while I'm in the area once a day until Revered. Then farm for jelly with the item that shows jelly on the minimap.

Raid-wise, we're working on Heroic Azshara. We've mastered the decrees and are working on killing the Phase 3 adds and Phase 4.

World of Warcraft Classic

I levelled a whole bunch of classes to the level 10 to 15 range. Then for some reason I picked up my rogue and just ran with it. My rogue is level 20 now.

It's interesting playing DPS again. You have no control over the group and since tanks and healers are so rare, you just grin and bear it. Like I did Deadmines, and the healer seemed to be playing a game where he let the tank's health drop to as near zero as possible before getting a heal. Is it really too much to ask for people to just play sensibly?

I do like all the rogue quests that encourage you to use skills like Stealth and Pickpocket. Retail WoW could really use some class quests again.

Heh, perhaps the most shocking change in Classic that I've forgotten is that Sap takes you out of stealth. I used Sap for the first time on one of a large group, hoping to stealth past. Instead I came out of combat and was promptly slaughtered by the rest of the group. Combined with being unable to Sap people in combat, Sap is surprisingly useless in Classic.

First Open World Death in Classic

I finally had a character die out in the world in Classic. (I did have a few deaths on my druid in a dungeon). As predicted, it was because of stupidity, rather than the game being hard.

I was on my level 13 Warrior, and I joined a group of around the same level to kill Defias. After that, the group wanted to kill gnolls, so I tagged alone. They went to the southern gnoll camps, the ones with level 16 or so gnolls. That's +3 levels, so high enough to be dangerous, but there were four of us.

Surely it would be easy enough if we pulled carefully.

After killing one mob, I turned around and noticed the healer had managed to pull four level 16 mobs and was half-dead. Like an idiot I charged in instead of running away. And shortly thereafter we were all dead.

Otherwise, I'm pretty much just making low level alts in Classic. I have 7 characters between levels 7 and 15. Maybe I should just give up on Classic. It hasn't managed to really capture my interest. It really feels like the best or most optimum way to play is to play in as tedious a manner as possible. And the game is already tedious enough.

Two Murlocs

There's a debate running in the WoW blogosphere about the difficulty of Classic WoW. I had an experience last night which may shed more light on the issue.

I made a Human Warrior and was running around Elywnn Forest doing the quest that requires killing murlocs. I came across the dead body of a paladin, let's call him Dave, near one of the murloc camps. A few minutes later, I came across Dave again. He had pulled two murlocs and was at half-health. I jumped in and helped him kill the murlocs.

Several minutes after that, Dave starts ranting in General Chat about murlocs, and how when you attack one in a camp another comes, and you keep dying. The reaction in chat was not particularly charitable, telling him to form a group, or attack the lone murlocs instead of groups.

So here you have two perspectives:

• Classic WoW is difficult. If you get into a fight with two murlocs, there is a high chance you will die.

• Classic WoW is easy. The solution is trivial. Don't attack two murlocs.

Both perspectives are true, but I think neither perspective encompasses the whole.

In some ways, it comes back to my old posts on Small Decisions. Attacking murlocs is a small decision. The solution is trivial, don't attack two, only attack one. It's very similar to having to deal with ammo. Don't start a fight when you are low on arrows, go back to town and restock. Many of the commenters on those posts felt that small decisions with obvious solutions were a bad idea, and just busy work. For example, killing lone murlocs isn't hard. But you have to patrol more to find them, and it is more tedious.

Modern WoW has smoothed away most of those small decisions, instead choosing fewer large decisions that occur less frequently. For example, the equivalent of two murlocs in Classic might be an elite in Retail, which may happen only once in any given zone.

However, it's not obvious that this was the right decision. Many small decisions with easy solutions, and yet obvious consequences, might be better for the game than fewer, larger decisions.

WoW Classic Observations, Part 2

More WoW Classic observations:

• Ragnaros and Onyxia have been killed already, pretty much putting a stake through the heart of the "Classic is hard!" crowd. As someone observed, Queen Azshara has about as many mechanics as all of Molten Core combined.

• I was a bit surprised when Ragnaros died. I thought Hydraxian Waterlord rep would gate the kill. But apparently you can grind Hydraxian Waterlord rep in Silithus or something, so people were able to obtain enough Aqual Quintessence to spawn Ragnaros.

• I'm really not feeling the druid. After playing a bit more and trying to analyse why, I think I just don't like shape-shifting for some reason. Druid is also the one original class I've never really been able to level on Retail either, and I think it is for much the same reason. Maybe it's part of my aversion to transmog, where I like seeing my character look change as I level.

• I did try to tank Ragefire Chasm at level 12. This was probably a small mistake, as many enemies are level 15 and bosses are level 16. It did get better when I dinged 13 in the middle of the dungeon. Also, druid is completely missing AoE threat and a ranged pull in Bear form (at that level), so gathering mobs was a little difficult. Apparently you get Swipe at 16, in time for Deadmines or Wailing Caverns, which would have made life a lot easier.

• I've been trying several other classes, but I really cannot pick a class to focus on.

• We are beginning to see more and more posts suggesting that--for a lot of players--Blizzard was right when they said "You think you want it, but you don't." I think Classic is actually improving the view of Retail by highlighting the things Retail does better.

• I think the wider WoW community is beginning to coalesce around the phrase "Retail is a better game. Classic is a better world." I've seen it posted in multiple discussion threads by multiple people, and it is always highly rated and gets positive responses. In a month or so, I predict this will be the accepted wisdom in the WoW community.

More WoW Classic Thoughts

Tuesday was raid night in BfA so I didn't play much Classic. We did log on after the raid to set up a Classic guild, which was mostly a round of collecting silver and signatures from people running to Razor Hill. I did get a chance to play more on Wednesday. Here are some random thoughts:

• It looks like Blizzard bit the bullet and drastically increased the number of layers per server. While this has greatly reduced queues, it will probably cause them grief when it comes time to collapse those layers. But I guess they're kicking the can down the road, and figuring that queues later are better than queues now.

• I find it pretty funny coming across skeletons in Mulgore. You can tell that, yup, a lowbie got jumped by a few mobs and died here.

• Speaking of which, I've seen some people claim that these deaths are evidence that Classic is hard, and I don't think that's correct. It's very easy to avoid dying in Classic. Pull carefully, don't attack more than one mob at a time, run away if a second one engages. It's more that people are impatient, and willing to push the edge. And then sometimes they misjudge and die.

• I've got Corhal up to level 10, though I haven't done the druid quest (bear form, I believe) yet. I'm not really "feeling" the druid, though. I'm not sure if I should keep going, or try a different class. After all, I will have bear and cat forms eventually, and those might be more interesting than casting.

• The one thing I really, really like in Classic is the chat. Now maybe this is just because it is launch, but it is very nice to see conversations going on. I do think that the amount of downtime does help, though. It's very easy to type something quickly while drinking or eathing to regen mana and health after a fight.

• It's funny to see much of the lowbie conversation revolve around bags. Six-slot bags are the equivalent of epics in Mulgore.

Classic WoW Launch!

Yesterday, WoW Classic launched. There were major queues on many (if not all) of the servers. I was at work during the actual launch. When I got home, there was about a 90 minute queue on Atiesh. So I left it running and went and did some chores.

When I finally got in, I made a male Tauren druid named Corhal. In contrast to many of the other posts I've seen, the starting area was fairly empty. There were a few other people, but there was plenty of space for questing. It was also fairly quiet, with no chat, which I found unusual.

It's possible that I was one of the first to be assigned to a fresh layer, as it seemed like there were more people as time went on, and chat became livelier. One positive about the chat is that people seemed disinclined to talk about current WoW. Another amusing thing about Mulgore chat is that people keep losing the ghost wolf for the Rite of Vision escort quest, and have to be directed by chat to the cave with the quest.

In any case, I did all the initial quests, and grouped up with a warrior and a hunter to do the quests in Bristleback Ravine. We even found a quest in a cave that I had never seen before!

I ended up logging off when I got to Bloodhoof village, at level 5. Fun times. Hopefully the queues calm down quickly.

Social Addons in Classic WoW

Blizzard announced that they would take steps to break a Looking-For-Group addon for Classic WoW:

We’ve been closely following the community discussion around this add-on for WoW Classic, as well as analyzing it to make sure we understand how it works. After careful examination, we believe the nature of ClassicLFG is incompatible with our social design for Classic. Thus, in an upcoming patch (in the weeks following launch), we will be adding restrictions to the Classic add-on API that will significantly limit this add-on and others like it. 

In line with what we shared at BlizzCon last year, we intend to be very careful about allowing add-on functionality that might undermine aspects of the social dynamics that are core to the Classic experience, even in cases like this where it’s clear that the addon author had no ill intent and was simply trying to provide a service to the Classic community. Ultimately, if a streamlined group-finding system was something we considered compatible with Classic, we would have kept the modern Premade Group Finder tool rather than choosing to remove it from the Classic client. 

It’s difficult to articulate a clear-cut rule for exactly when an add-on crosses the line. However, when an add-on goes beyond presenting information or providing aesthetic customization, and attempts to create an interconnected social network that relies on other players also using that same add-on, we are likely to scrutinize it particularly closely.

I did predict that the addon community would attempt to replicate the "convenience" of modern WoW. But it is very interesting that Blizzard is going to take steps to stop them. In particular, Blizzard singles out the automation of social networks as perhaps the primary difference between Classic and modern WoW.

It is perhaps ironic that this is mimicking society at large. Facebook, Tinder, Instagram, Twitter. Instead of older, more manual methods like writing letters, assemblies/dances, writing articles for publication, etc.

I'm not really sure where I am going with this. Maybe the old, manual, ways were better for social cohesion. Maybe the modern, automated, ways are better as they make it easier to find like-minded people, or just to get things done without all the social maintenance required.

Either way, Classic is going to be a very intriguing experiment.

Classic Name Reservation

My guild has decided to go Horde for Classic. We are making characters on Atiesh, one of the North American PST PvE servers. I think most people in the guild will be treating their Classic characters like an alt on retail

I jumped on and reserved three names on Atiesh. I'm not sure if they really fit Horde characters, though.

Going Horde immediately solved the dilemma of playing a paladin or not. It's simply not an option for Horde. Now, however, I have no idea what I want to play. I'm thinking about an Undead Priest, an Orc Warrior, a Tauren Druid, or maybe an Undead Mage. Or maybe a Rogue of some sort.

I am ruling out Hunters, Warlocks, or Shaman. I'm leaning against dealing with ammo, soul shards, and pets. And Shaman, seems to much like the same problems as Paladins. Though now that I am writing things down, maybe it would be nice to play one of these classes.

Heh, in some ways it would have been easier if we had gone Alliance. I probably would have just ended up with my default of Human Paladin.

Heroic Ashvane, Orgozoa, Queen's Court

We killed Lady Ashvane, Orgozoa and the Queen's Court in the Eternal Palace Heroic raid tonight.

We struggled the most on Ashvane, simply not getting enough damage before getting overwhelmed. I think that will become easier as we get used to the fight, especially breaking the coral. We were not doing well with it. I did get a new healing mace from Ashvane, though.

Heroic Orgozoa, I think is undertuned compared to Ashvane. We actually one-shot it. I think it would have been fine if it had come before Ashvane, but after Ashvane it was a little easy.

Heroic Queen's Court took us a few tries, but it's one of those fights where there are a few mechanics which absolutely have to be handled perfectly, but once you get those down, the rest of the fight is straightforward.

Perhaps it is because we didn't have a lot of turnover from last tier, but we're really moving along at a steady clip in Heroic Eternal Palace. I rather imagine the next two bosses are going to take a few weeks.

Updates

Been a while since my last post. I'm not sure what happened. There was so much content released recently that I've been spending all my time playing instead of writing.

World of Warcraft

I've basically been alternating between Nazjatar and Mechagon. I'm still Revered with both factions. I haven't had a chance to do the Mechagon dungeon yet.

For the Eternal Palace raid, we've cleared it on Normal, and have killed the first three bosses on Heroic. It's a pretty good raid, with some interesting fights.

Final Fantasy FFXIV

I finished the main story, did the new dungeons, and have tried the new raid on Normal difficulty.

The new raid, Eden, is pretty interesting. I actually like the story a lot, better than the MSQ. It's interesting, and I have no idea where they are going with it.

SE is introducing a lot of new mechanics in this raid. For example, there's a delayed timer mechanic. You get the marker for the next mechanic (basically stack or spread) like normal and boss does the cast. But then the cast finishes, the marker disappears and a countdown starts over your head. When the countdown disappears, whatever mechanic originally targets you goes off.

It's a pretty good raid overall.

8.2 Nazjatar

World of Warcraft released patch 8.2, Rise of Azshara, this week. It introduced two new zones, Nazjatar and Mechagon. You go to Nazjatar first. I haven't really started Mechagon, so these are just impressions of Nazjatar.

Nazjatar is an interesting zone. The story line unlocks a faction which you ally with. For Alliance, it's the Waveblade Ankoan, who are basically fish-men. There are a lot of quests, and things to find and unlock.

Gameplay-wise, the zone is a combination of dailies and world quests, which actually work fairly well together. A lot of the dailies are more general, like "kill 15 Naga", which you can do anywhere on the island. You also choose one of three Ankoan companions who fight alongside you, and have three specific daily quests to level up. So you try to do dailies and World Quests at the same time, completing the dailies on the way to and from the World Quests.

I chose the hunter companion, who honestly comes across as a bit emo. I think I'll try the shaman next.

The combination of having some quests which are tied to a specific location, and others which are more general, is very good. It allows you to play a mini-optimising game with your quests each day.

There's also lots of puzzle quests in Nazjatar. Everyone was complaining about this one where you have to rescue someone by bouncing on jellyfish. I thought it was pretty easy, as I one-shot it. Maybe it was beginner's luck, but all you need to do is turn and face the next platform/jellyfish as you are being bounced.

Nazjatar also has Benthic armour, which you can buy and upgrade with the currency found in the zone. I'm not entirely certain if it's something a raider should pursue, or if it's mostly for solo players, alts, and filling in holes. I blew most of my currency on fixing an Abyssal device, which doesn't seem to do anything, but might be used in crafting later. So gear is mostly moot for me at this point.

One thing is that the armour is random, but whatever stats it has is maintained as it upgrades. So it's possible that the ideal is gambling until you get a piece with the best secondaries and a socket, and then upgrading that. The initial armour is very cheap as well, which lends itself to this strategy.

Edit: Apparently the secondaries and special Benthic bonuses are fixed for each item slot. All belts have the same secondaries and Benthic bonus, etc. So if you want to gamble, it's really only for tertiary stats like leech and sockets.

Second Edit: Apparently the above is not quite right. Some slots have multiple "types" of Benthic armor. Each type has specific secondaries and bonuses. Like there are three different plate legs.

All in all, Nazjatar is a pretty interesting zone, with a variety of activities. It should be interesting to see how things unfold, especially as there is a second zone to balance it out.

A Worrying Sign for Classic?

My latest experiences in the WoW Classic Beta have made me more pessimistic about the success of the WoW Classic. To wit, the early zones, Elywnn Forest and Westfall, are already dead. Honestly, they died faster than many of the other "failed" MMOs which I've tried.

I ended up deleting all the characters I made and started fresh with a Priest. There are very few (like on the order or 5 or less) people in Elywnn Forest. Local chat is completely dead.  I got up to Hogger, and then spent time on the weekend going, "LFG Hogger".  After three different sessions, I finally got a level 9 dwarf hunter to take pity on me and we teamed up and killed Hogger.

Westfall is pretty much the same. There isn't even anyone just hanging out in Goldshire. In Retail, there's always people dueling or jumping around in Goldshire.

Classic is a game which requires other people. If there are no other people around, it becomes a very frustrating experience.

Now, maybe everyone is on higher level characters, and focusing on them. Though Stormwind was pretty empty as well. Maybe people aren't playing because it is Beta, and they're saving their powder for when Classic launches.

I guess my advice to people thinking about Classic is to make sure you do not miss the initial wave of players. If you fall behind, Classic will rapidly become a lot less fun.

Classic Stress Test Thoughts

Blizzard started a stress test for Classic yesterday, where anyone in NA with a WoW subscription could try Classic. The servers will be up for a day or two, if you didn't get to try Classic out.

I found the test quite funny. Blizzard was clearly testing their server stability, as they put way too many people in the zone for game-play purposes. I made a mage, and I had a lot of trouble finishing the very first quest. I'd start casting a Fireball at a kobold, and someone would tag it before the cast finished.

In the end, I resorted to running up to the kobold, hitting it with my staff to tag it, and only then start casting Fireballs.

The conversation in the zone was very lively, and everyone was remarking how this was totally unlike retail servers where it's silent. That's true, but the Beta servers were like that at the start, and now they're dead silent.

If I was making an MMO, I would strongly consider adding a world chat channel that everyone on the server is in.  There's a critical mass of people necessary to get chat going. For zone chat, it really only exists in the starting zones, and really only at launch.

Or maybe, like Blizzard is having layers for the world, have "layers" for chat that expand and contract depending on the number of people. Maybe the game starts with one chat for the starting zone, and all the other zones have the same chat. Then as people starting levelling up, maybe the first two zones share the same chat, and so on.

Classes in an Alternate Burning Crusade

Continuing on from my previous post on races, another major mistake The Burning Crusade expansion made was with classes. Specifically allowing Alliance Shamans and Horde Paladins.

I've discussed this before, but I think that the Alliance in particular lost a lot of its identity when the Horde got paladins. Especially as the Silver Hand opened up to both factions, but the Horde had separate orders for the Blood Knights and Sunwalkers.

In an alternate TBC, paladins could stay Alliance, and shamans could stay Horde. As long as Blessing of Salvation (and the equivalent totem) is removed, there would be no real imbalance.

Then, assuming an alternate Wrath comes along, perhaps the Horde could get Death Knights, and the Alliance gets Demon Hunters (since both Night Elves and Blood Elves are Alliance in my alternate timeline).

I think reinforcing the faction division mechanically, with different classes that play significantly different, would be a much better path. WoW chose to homogenise the factions. In the long run, I think that was not a good decision.

Personal Loot Needs an 'Any Specialization' Option

Quick thought from raiding tonight. Personal Loot needs an 'Any Specialization' option.

Right now, you can choose 'Current Specialization' or pick a specific specialization. But at this point in farming, an 'Any' option would be really nice. If you're a Holy Paladin, you might get a Ret weapon, or a Prot trinket, without giving up the chance to get a Warforged Holy item.

The other option is basically switching loot specializations on all the different bosses, which is rather fiddly. As well, it's unfortunate when one specific boss has items from different specs, and you have choose which spec to forego.

Perhaps a small change, but I think it would make Personal Loot a bit better.

Revisiting the Deadmines

I finally reached a point where I could take on the first Alliance dungeon, the Deadmines. Luckily a guildie was looking for a final DPS spot, and I was the quickest to respond. The group was a warrior tank, a paladin healer, a rogue, a hunter, and my paladin. All about level 17 or 18.

The run was ... interesting.

It wasn't bad. People generally knew what they were doing. But we didn't use any crowd control. The warrior tank didn't really have any AoE threat, but played as if she did. So the rogue and I often ended up tanking individual mobs.  The warrior also didn't have any ranged weapons, likely because she had not gone to Darnassus to train them yet. So every pull was a body pull or a charge.

I did enjoy playing the old-style paladin. Mostly dealing damage, tanking the occasional mob, throwing out a heal every so often. Especially on VanCleef, when the healer went out-of-mana at about 30%, so I healed the last bit.

We did wipe once in the middle, too many goblin runners.  The hunter had run out of ammo, so he took a spirit res to buy some more. Then the others ran out of the dungeon to help him get back, though he did die once on the way. I stayed in the dungeon to make sure it didn't reset.

Most of the bosses were fairly easy. After VanCleef, we jumped down to get Cookie, but pulled too many mobs and died. At that point the healer called it, and the group disbanded. In total, the run took about an hour and half.

I'm not really sure what to think about that run. On the one hand, it wasn't entirely successful. We wiped twice. It took a fairly long time. We didn't even clear the entire dungeon.

On the other hand, it was memorable. It made for a better story than the fast, efficient, successful runs of modern WoW. Is that valuable? It's good for your first run of a dungeon to be memorable, but I rather expect you want your hundredth run of that same dungeon to be fast, efficient and successful.

Races in an Alternate Burning Crusade

Assuming Classic is a success, what is the future of Classic servers? The most probable option is that Blizzard releases The Burning Crusade for Classic, following the same path as Classic.

But playing with Classic Beta has lead me to believe that TBC made several big mistakes, which weakened the setup of Classic WoW. In some ways, an alternate TBC, with several changes and essentially new content, would be a better future. Of course, Classic would have to be spectacularly successful for Blizzard to green-light something like this. And even then, they may not, believing that fidelity to what was released is more important.

The biggest mistake, in my opinion, was having the Blood Elves join the Horde.

In Classic, the Horde has a very strong identity. They are the monsters, banding together for survival. In the immortal words of Zangief from Wreck-It Ralph, "You are bad guy, but this does not mean you are bad guy."

The blood elves really weaken this. They're pretty elves. Blizzard tried their best to give them a dark backstory, but when you join a group where 4 of 5 characters are blood elves, it just doesn't feel like the Horde, not the way a Classic Horde group does. Now, maybe Blizzard did need a pretty race to balance the factions numerically, but that balance came at the cost of the Horde's identity.

What I would suggest is that the Alliance gets the Blood Elves, and the Horde gets the Worgen. Werewolves are classic monsters, and would fit in with the Horde. Of course, this would invalidate pretty much all of current WoW's story lines.

A later expansion could give the Horde goblins, and the Alliance draenei. Keeping the Horde's identity as the "monstrous" faction, and keeping the Alliance as the "normal RPG" faction would serve make the factions more distinct.

Classic Thoughts, Part II

Other People in Classic

A long time ago, I observed that:

It's a little unfair to the developers, but the best reason to play WoW instead of other MMOs is that you don't have to listen to people talking about WoW.

Well, now you can play WoW while listening to people constantly talk about WoW. Either castigating Battle for Azeroth or reminiscing about 15 years ago. It's non-stop, and it's like these people don't have any other conversation.

Truthfully, it makes me less inclined to play Classic.

Grouping and Questing

Regarding the discussion of grouping and questing, I came across this old post of mine from TBC days: Is Questing Anti-Social. An excerpt:

I think people don't group because they are ambivalent about approaching strangers. Maybe it's fear of rejection, a desire not to impose on someone else, or feeling bad about asking for help. But my experience is that a lot of people are perfectly willing to group up, they just don't want to be the one to ask. And because you can solo most quests, they don't ask unless they have to.

I think we are already seeing this issue in the Beta. Classic is a game which works best when groups are formed easily. But people simply don't like to group.

Will Classic Weaken Guilds on Live?

My current guess is that Classic will attract a great deal of attention on launch. But over the next three months, it will lose 90% of its audience. It will still stabilise at a few hundred thousand, numbers any other MMO would envy.

I don't think that Live will lose significant numbers to Classic. However, I wonder if the "type" of people who switch from Live to Classic will matter.

Basically, the type of people who will be very attracted to Classic are the highly social and the organizers. They'll be the ones who will be able to handle the grouping, who have a rolodex of friendly tanks or healers. In Live, though, these are the people who form the strong core of guilds. Guild leaders, officers, etc.

Numerically, these people are outnumbered by the rank-and-file. But they're the type of people who's loss hurts the most. I look at my current guild, and I think I have a general sense of who would be most interested in Classic. If we lost half of them at the same time, it would hurt us a lot.

I think something similar happened before, when 10-man raids were introduced. The core of many existing raid teams focused on 10-mans, but a lot of the rank-and-file ended up dropping away.

Classic Thoughts From The Weekend

More observations and thoughts on WoW Classic, from the Beta:

• I am really unsure how successful Classic will be. Sometimes I think it will do well, but then I see three groups going "LF Tank for DM" in Westfall chat, and I become more sceptical.
• One group even offered to pay the tank 15 silver. It's been years since I've seen that. Also, it is amusing how 15 silver is a valuable reward in Classic.
• I made a whole bunch of alts and tried the various classes up to level 7 or so. Paladin is the most boring, all the other classes are reasonable.
• Rogue is the one class which feels the most similar to modern classes, and you can see how many classes have become more like the Rogue over time.
• I think the best way to play Classic is to be super-aggressive about grouping. Someone is in the same area as you doing the same quest? Send them an invite, do the quest, and then say good bye.
• This is especially important for paladins. Add a single group member and game-play smooths out and efficiency spikes.
• In some ways, I think Classic levelling is a better game than Live when in a group, but a significantly worse game when solo. When you're in a group in Classic, even at very low levels, there is a noticeable feeling of the group being stronger than the sum of its parts.
• The question then becomes how easy is it to get a group while levelling.