Classic Plus Feature Analysis — Full Breakdown & Transcript

[00:02] it's just you can just it just hits. It just hits. It just hits, guys. Classic plus might already be hiding in plain sight. I had uh 150 to 2, 3, 4, 500 of you guys tell me to react to this one. So, here we are reacting to it. Mad

[00:17] Season, wow upload. I love you. I know Mad right now, which I, you know, I can't even blame him. Like, Runescape is a good game. They they make a lot of great decisions. So like I can't even blame

[00:32] them. But I I I for one do miss the Mad Season W videos. This is the first one got for us? Is Classic Plus hiding in got for us? Is Classic Plus hiding in plain sight? Let's see.

[00:53] back with another video for you. All right, so Classic Plus, it's not confirmed yet, but in my opinion, it's a 99% chance of releasing. We recently went over the why and all of the hints that Blizzard has been dropping over the

[01:07] that video in the description if you are curious. But what I wanted to focus on today >> is realistically what would it look like considering Blizzard's development practices and history. and you know also

[01:21] going over things such as uh the classic plusesque survey questions that they've shared in the past and also the fact that Blizzard has said that the entire season of Discovery was a big experiment but an experiment for what you may be

[01:35] >> Well, let's get into it. Before we begin though, I'd like to >> No way. I'm sponsored by Surf Shark 2. Wait for it. Wait for it. Wait for it.

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[02:54] and threats common to many online scams. >> I didn't know they had that either. Surely make it to your inbox. So, it's not only useful, but it also has some important safety features as well. And if you're unsatisfied with it, they also

[03:07] offer a 30-day money back guarantee. So secure policy with Surf Shark and enter the coupon code MAD for an extra four months at surfshark.com/mad. comment in [music] the description. So they're two very big pieces of

[03:21] over in the >> Okay, so uh Surf Shark. Yeah, uh that's solid. Um, getting back to the video though, we were just having a discussion if if if Classic Plus has to be monetized, how

[03:37] you would do that. And a lot of you guys said you wouldn't mind a box price if it meant no shop. And I agree with you, right? There's a tier list of things.

[03:50] It's like if we could pay a certain amount upfront to make sure that there's never a shop in the game, that's a great trade-off. And I agree with that. My copium take is that there's neither. It's that it's just like Season of

[04:05] Discovery where you pay your monthly sub. And Blizzard's hope is that since you have a WoW sub, you'll go play retail when there's a new expansion and buy the new retail expansion. It's a loss leader. It's like Costco with

[04:21] they're not making a bunch of money on the chickens, but it's getting people in the door to buy all the other stuff that they have margin on. I hope that Classic they have margin on. I hope that Classic Plus is Costco's rotisserie chickens.

[04:35] I hope it's to get the masses through the door and getting a Wow sub so that Blizzard could then market their other stuff for people to maybe try retail, couple mounts and this and that. but the masses move to it. Another

[04:51] example, Runescape. Runescape uses this same model with Runescape uses this same model with Runescape 3 and OSRS to my knowledge, where Old School has way more players, but Runescape 3 is their cash cow. So,

[05:07] they get players on Old School. There's way more players that play Old School, but it's not really monetized as well. But players that play old school might then funnel into RS3, play RS3, which is monetized much better, and Jagex makes

[05:22] more of their money in RS3 per subscriber than they do on Old School. I hope Classic Plus is the same way. They funnel people in. You have a good time. If that's all you want, that's all you take. But there's more there with more

[05:37] take. But there's more there with more monetization on retail. Copium, I know, but that would be the best case scenario. please. Okay, >> this video starting first with the season of discovery in both the

[05:49] announcement itself and throughout the development and even in in the sendoff [music] for the game mode when they announced that it was no longer being developed, they had made mention several times that this temporary game mode was

[06:04] >> Yeah. >> Or they say things like they learned a lot from it. So, combining this with other various teases, like the [music] weird 2026 state of review thing, >> all classic players across the globe

[06:17] have a lot to look forward to, I'm really excited to announce that >> As well as this line from your yearbook with a bunch of plus symbols. I think

[06:29] it's fairly reasonable to assume that the core of plus will consist of what they consider to be the greatest successes of discovery while hopefully leaving out the not so successful things >> and this is where it gets objective

[06:43] because you know what are successes and failures right but trying to take the most objective look possible probably a good place to start is with one of its most major features which is the rune system although during its release in

[06:57] the class balance of the game was quite impeccable by the time standards. It is definitely something that uh by today's standards hasn't aged the best in some ways for some people. Personally, if I may interject my opinion here, I I like

[07:12] it. I think it has charm and I think that the roles are much more specialized, which gives the classes values and these special jobs that [music] only they excel at. Like I think it's cool that mages are by far the best

[07:25] AoE class or [music] warriors are the best tanks and you know you have other various classes and specs being great at some things and bad at other things. I think that weaknesses are often mischaracterized as flaws. [music]

[07:38] But they're just as valuable as strengths in the identity of classes and specializations. And if you treat weaknesses as flaws to be fixed, eventually everything just kind of melds into one another and the

[07:51] classes no longer have these interesting identities that separate them from each identities that separate them from each other.

[08:04] minute again? Did you guys all get that? Like come on. Mad season spitting right now, man. Absolutely. You can't have every class at the same level on everything or else every class is like has no weaknesses and they all just feel

[08:17] the same and it's homogenized and it's just like what are we doing? You have to weaknesses. Okay, you you like because that's means it's another class's world feel good and go around because each class brings something unique to

[08:32] the table. It has to be that way. And if you don't like your class, then reroll to one that you do. But this whole whining on the forums to buff your class so that it performs as good as all the other classes just makes the game feel

[08:47] bad. Well said, brother. >> Because eventually everybody's mobile. >> Well, that's that guys. That's why I play mage. That's not the point. Just play mage if you want to. AoE, single target tanking, and the balance becomes

[09:03] target tanking, and the balance becomes better. But it also becomes as boring as my voice. But of course, the other extreme isn't the best either where, of course, in vanilla, you have some classes and specs that are severely

[09:15] broken, such as balanced druids going out of mana in like 10 seconds or whatever. So, this was one of the major focuses of the Season of Discovery, >> and they addressed it with the rune system, where players could find all of

[09:27] these different unique runes throughout the world that sort of fill out all of the different specializations. These, from what I recall, were received fairly well. There were some issues. Some people like them, not only for their

[09:39] but also in the [music] way that you obtained them initially, at least. They you just trained them at a class trainer. They were often hidden in the world or locked behind quest chains or faction reputations. They did try to

[09:54] leverage one of vanilla's biggest strengths, which is that world presence. However, this would eventually backfire on them, as shown with them eventually room for [music] a copper right from the starting area. The reason why they did

[10:07] this is that they felt like they went a little too overboard. [music] And as time went on, at a certain point, there were so many runes that [music] starting a new character kind of became a daunting task for people. So, they

[10:20] just made them easily available. But, as they said, it was all an experiment. So, maybe this is something that they picked up on and will monitor more >> how do you guys feel about the rune system versus just having more talents?

[10:36] kind of like how TBC or Wrath did it where the tree just gets expanded or you learn it from the trainer. Cozy, bad, bad, bad, more talents. I prefer runes should be talents, not runes. More talents. So, when I played Sod um two

[10:53] years ago when it launched, one of my criticisms was, why did they do the rune criticisms was, why did they do the rune system? Why not just make it like TBC or Wrath where you just had another talent and learned it from this trainer? You

[11:05] could even put it behind a quest if you wanted like uh what's the infernal quest line? Like summon infernal quest line for warlock for example. Like that's for warlock for example. Like that's cool. Or like uh

[11:17] zerker quest line for warrior, right? Like that's cool. Or like the redemption quest line for paladin. Like that's cool. Like do stuff like that instead of instead of the rune system. So I think I still feel that way. Um, having said

[11:32] that, one of the cool things about the rune system is how easily you can swap roles on the fly just by switching gear or switching the rune. Like, oh, we need a healer. Let me switch to my healing runes. Done. Or we need like, oh, I like

[11:48] I'm dueling someone and like I want to like leave combat, swap my boots to change my play style. Like stuff like that is like crazy. like the potential is crazy with gear swapping and rune swapping either mid combat or even um

[12:02] just mid dungeon like that the utility of it is actually kind of nice but in terms of just the accessibility and like the like it doesn't feel very intuitive just oh I'm going to do a quest go to the talent trainer and just play Wow I

[12:18] always have. So I think overall I still don't like it. Um, think are are are nice about it, but like overall I think I'd rather just

[12:31] have bigger talent trees. You know, >> feature of discovery I'd say is world presence. This is kind of tied into the runes as mentioned, but there was some additional content added to the world in the form of secrets, new quests and

[12:43] areas and whatnot. Not really much else to say about that though. I think it's kind of an expected standard request on most people's lists. I guess one thing to say is that it would be important, I think, to not get tunnel visioned on new

[12:57] content solely at the max level, but Discovery had new content from beginning to end. And that was largely due to the phase level caps that it was structured around. As I remember, people generally liked the idea of this, and [music] most

[13:11] issues that they had with it came down to specific execution for each phase. This, as they stated themselves, [music] was inspired by the progressive testing of the classic 2019 beta when the phases were split up in different level caps.

[13:25] It introduced some interesting new metas that weren't really explored as much since, you know, the game is hyper analyzed, but of course, primarily at level 60. So, by having progressive level caps, they aimed to add an

[13:38] additional layer of a fresh and unique feeling, which I do think that they largely achieved with a lot of the criticisms of this dynamic being tied more towards the level up raids associated with them rather than the

[13:51] level [music] caps themselves. I like in retro, so like during like so phase one hype moment of like, oh wow, we're capped at 25 now. just going to be a

[14:03] whole level 25 meta that's like never been discovered. Like what can you do at level 25? And we did stuff like try to raid um Isisle of the Dread or some of these like islands. Uh what's the island with the Naga and the little gnome dude

[14:18] at the end? Can't even [snorts] remember. Um we we I think we failed can you do? And like we explored the world at level 25 and it was this really cool unique perspective. Um, and then level 40 came around and like that was

[14:32] okay, too. By the time 50 came around, I think we were over it and just wanted to for other reasons like the spammable quests. Um, and it seems like a lot of the phases were a little bit too long as

[14:44] well. Like it's like, "All right, I'm ready for the next one now." But like so we're just kind of like sitting there doing nothing for like weeks on end. Um, but I think it brought a lot of good with it.

[14:57] So, here's my question for Classic Plus. Should they do something similar or no? I mean, my my I my my my It's no, right? Like, you just you just go to you just play the game. Like, as as fun as it was, you just don't don't do that again.

[15:10] No. No. No. No. Yeah. No. No. No. Yeah. I mean, as fun as the level cap thing was for Sod, I just Yeah. I I don't see it being a good idea to to ever do that it being a good idea to to ever do that again. As far as I remember, Nooman and

[15:24] more so sunken temple in particular were kind of received poorly with sunken temple in particular being kind of a moment where a large percentage of the [music] getting into the end game here, you may remember that they did dip into

[15:39] old abandoned content [music] from the original run. Specifically, they did the dungeon. >> So good. They did the Scarlet Crusade raid as well as a quest line for the legendary Ashbringer to name just a few

[15:52] examples, but these are extremely common requests within the community. So, there's no real insightful information to glean from this. It's just kind of an automatic thing, but still worth mentioning, I [music] thought. So, the

[16:05] Season of Discovery holds some information, and if you did play it, chances are that the skeleton of [music] Classic Plus will be fairly similar to it. Yeah, the fact that they kept saying over and over again that it's an

[16:17] experiment. We're testing stuff. We learned so much from X, Y, and Z for the future, I think is very indicative and [music] the role that it will play for Classic Plus. The the biggest sentence to me in this blue post um I think Mad

[16:34] too. I don't know if it's intentional or not, but this to me is the biggest sentence. This is the one that I've highlighted on my channel a lot. that future of uh that future for Season of Discovery is somewhat bittersweet as

[16:48] we've made wait should I say the future anyway as we've made the decision to slow down on Season of Discovery and begin work on our next major project in begin work on our next major project in the original WoW design space

[17:03] blue post saying we're beginning work on our next saying we're beginning work on our next major project. This was a year ago. is confirmed." And everyone's like, "That's some copiums are

[17:19] me, this is the big sentence that just pretty much is. It's not even like just confirmed. They just said it like every anyone can read it any like it's right right there, guys. It's right there. I think is very [music] indicative in

[17:34] the role that it will play for Classic Plus. But beyond this, we also have the survey in 2025. Blizzard sent out a survey to players asking about a hypothetical version of classic and they pitched many different specific

[17:50] features. So, we don't have answers to these. Only Blizzard has them. However, there has been a communityrun survey called the classic plus project, which I'll have linked in the description with similar or even the same questions so we

[18:05] something that's really interesting with this survey is that there's another content creator on YouTube named Jordy who makes classic World of Warcraft videos and he made a video about this survey and in the comments was Agrand

[18:20] who's been like the main classic guy and if you did see my previous video [music] classic project that's doesn't have anything to do with Mr. Panderia Classic or >> and we've covered this post as well,

[18:35] >> and we've covered this post as well, but agend the classic guy like a year ago. Last year I officially changed roles from game production to game design. I've got my whole focus now dedicated to

[18:52] helping lead the longterm vision for content and narrative on the vision for content and narrative on the classic team. Who's on Copium now, guys?

[19:06] >> Classic anniversary. So, that would only leave a year ago. We've had this info for a year >> and he's commenting on a video about the very survey that we're about to go over. So the idea here is that we can use

[19:18] these to make reasonable guesses on the data that Blizzard has gotten and depending on the results, what features may or may not make it into the game, results of the survey. There are about

[19:30] 40 questions in total. Some of them are very common requests for Classic Plus from the community and others I personally have never seen before. So, and then we'll go over the community score to see how people answered them.

[19:45] Starting with the rather popular one here, we have cross faction shamans and paladins. This was of course the feature released in the Burning Crusade expansion with the Draani and blood elf races where Horde got paladins and the

[19:57] races where Horde got paladins and the Alliance got shamans. I can see this one going either way. For me, I wouldn't quit either way. For me, it wouldn't be like that big of a deal if they did or didn't do it. There's some things that

[20:09] would be a big deal. This one is like eh if I had my preference, I think I would want shamans on alliance and palace on horde, a big deal. I I personally would love to play an undead paladin. I think that

[20:23] would be so cool. Um, but if they don't do it, you know, totally fine with them not doing it, >> which was a major change to the balance survey response from this [music]

[20:36] and the community has responded largely in favor out of about 47,000 responses. I guess I'm the minority here because I actually like the separation. I do think it's a fairly major part of the identity of vanilla. I know for balance, but

[20:51] interesting and it kind of gives the factions different identities in both PvE and PvP. I've always been a fan of having different [music] strategies and depending on what faction you are. While the balance of vanilla can definitely be

[21:06] improved, I think again it's also important to not go too overboard. Next, we have collections UI based storage system for pets, mounts, and toys to free up inventory space. The community responded again with the resounding yes.

[21:19] Inventory space is you probably know plays a pretty big role in vanilla both balance to limit like how many consumables or gadgets you can bring if you're an engineer but at least for the more collectionbased stuff like mounts

[21:33] pets and toys the community wants a [music] dedicated storage/interface for those. Next we have one verse one dual arenas. The ability to go into a special dueling arena for one verse one contest that are viewable by spectators.

[21:47] The community responded mostly receptive with most saying yes and the next saying yes and let us bet gold because gambling culture has taken over the world with the last 23% saying no. I am a fan of this. I've been saying this what what I

[22:02] like is that it's viewable by spectators. This is the big one for me. As soon as you get arenas that like you just teleport somewhere else and you in the world because of it, it's an L, right? You want the world to feel alive,

[22:15] not dead. But once there's a a a place that people can go and hang out and talk and meet people and duel and and view other duels and and spectate. It's like, yes, there we go. That's classic. So,

[22:30] I'm all for this. All for it. >> For years, actually, I think that Some of you might remember the OTK tournament that was hosted a while ago. pulled in like hundreds of thousands of

[22:43] viewers. I think it gets more eyes on the game and I just think it lends itself well to the whole idea because everybody always says vanilla is about community, right? So making it easier for these organizers

[22:57] to make these tournaments [music] and have spectator tools and whatnot so they don't have to go into out of bounds areas to avoid interference will make it which I think can be really good for the game. So, I'm [music] also very much in

[23:12] further and have >> this whole dueling island that you can only get to through a GM teleport [music] and have it filled with, you know, vendors for food, drinks,

[23:25] >> class trainers to respspec, basically everything to support some sort of PvP dueling tournament. I don't know. You could really leverage it in huge ways, I think, but that would also require Blizzard to hire an actual human

[23:39] employee to work as a GM. And I did actually calculate the chances of this happening. It's really interesting because it just happens to be [music] 016% chance [laughter] repeating of course,

[23:51] which completely coincidentally is the exact same chance of the people who swore up and down that the WoW token wasn't coming after my channel and saying that they were wrong because

[24:06] I told them so by the way. Next we have modern character models [laughter] personal option that would be toggled on and off by the players. I personally don't have an interest in this because I thought the whole idea was to not play

[24:19] modern World of Warcraft. But this is how the answers turned out on the classic plus [music] project with one being strongly disagree and 10 being strongly agree. Next is leveling profession improvements. the ability to

[24:31] you level [music] and to be able to craft it at level appropriate trade skill levels. So, here we have a resounding yes. This is actually a pretty common criticism with vanilla World of Warcraft is that if

[24:44] you're really on top of your trade skills and you go super out of your way to level them, you can make some useful gear. However, usually for the average trade skill level to make [music] something, you you've already gotten

[24:58] dungeon or whatever. So, assuming that this feedback matches what Blizzard has there's a very high chance that this would see a change. New class abilities and spells, brand new class abilities or spells unique to this version of

[25:12] classic. This was something that was in the season of discovery. Many of the runes, in fact, I would say the majority of them were abilities from other Wrath and whatnot, but they did have some new ones here and there from what I

[25:25] recall. It's also a very common request, and as you can see, it holds a resounding yes from the independent survey at almost 21,000 responses. Next, we do have a question relating to the honor system. move honor rewards away

[25:38] from the original model and towards a more seasonal mode where new honor rewards are added to coincide with the new PVE raid tier updates. So it's essentially the system that they've used from the Burning Crusade and onwards

[25:50] with the seasonal PVP gear. Whenever new raid tier comes out, a new PvP tier comes out and they kind of shuffle where you can obtain those items. There is a public question relating to the old rank 14 system, [music] but it is a little

[26:03] different offering four options, which is remove the weekly rank system [music] and you just rank up as you get honor. In second place, there's an unspecified overhaul [music] >> and it's the same go but with no decay.

[26:19] >> And lastly is just keep it as is. So, having done the rank 14 grind in the 2019 run, I am of the opinion that it is a pretty bad system overall. It's I feel

[26:31] like most people dislike it. Even the people that did it kind of dislike it. Like I know Savix did it. Remember Swifty, Mad Season? I'm trying to think who else. Like I feel like everyone kind of just even if you did it, it's like,

[26:45] "Yeah, that sucked." Like [laughter] um I didn't mind how it wasn't sawed that much. like there was no downranking um or danking I guess. Um I I I never rank 12 or something, but it wasn't like

[27:00] that bad. It was I mean we farmed quite a bit, but it wasn't like terrible. I don't know. The way it was in Sod it was it was kind of fine, I guess. Ludicrously grindy and unhealthy and toxic. And I think it's only gotten

[27:13] worse over time as people have become more sweaty. It definitely rewards time investment and not skill. It encourages pre-mades dodging other pre-mades because it's more honor efficient to just stomp pubs all the time. Um, I

[27:27] probably go with option two. Class talent adjustment. two, which is throw out the entire system and go back to the drawing board. I mean, it depends what the drawing board comes up with, right? Like there

[27:42] there could be some good ideas, there could be awful ones. It depends. Uh, I'd could be awful ones. It depends. Uh, I'd be open to hearing ideas. I think for me the original system seemed to just suck. Um

[27:59] needs to be a skillless grind, which is what classic WoW is, right? Which Oh, I'm sorry if that hurts, guys. I'm sorry. But it's it's if you put in the time, you get the reward. That's classic wow. You put in the time to prep, you

[28:13] raid. you put the time into getting all your your PBIS, you're going to do well on the meters, right? Is you if you prep, you will do well. That's classic, right? So, it should follow that, right? If you do if you put in the time, if you

[28:26] Because that's that's what makes Classic WoW classic WoW. Let's be honest. So, it don't think it should be some type of system where it's like skill-based like like, okay, you have to like get gladiator in arena and that'll be rank

[28:43] 14, right? like, "Oh, let's add in 3v3 and if you're over 2700 rating, that's the new rank 14." I think people I mean, some people would like that, but I think like, "Okay, this is just too sweaty. This this isn't this isn't classic well

[28:56] >> If you're asking my opinion, I'd probably go with option two. Class talent adjustments, streamlining, and improving class talent trees to make weaker specializations and classes more viable while still maintaining the

[29:09] [music] overall feel and flow of classic combat. The closest survey response is in the form of house. >> Okay, so yeah, rats, balance, props, arcane mages, enhance, survival hunter, shadow priest, ferals, like a

[29:23] lot of these need some big reworks, but yeah, like a lot of these are completely chill, you know? I wonder why 17% of people said arms warrior need I mean I people said arms warrior need I mean I guess 17 is pretty low cuz arms warrior

[29:36] Oh, I guess I'm thinking fury. Yeah, 10% want a fury warrior revamp. Okay, that makes sense. Combat Rogue's good. Holi's good. Resto's good. Frost mage. I'm surprised that low of people wanted a frost revamp. I mean, I guess a revamp

[29:50] is a strong word. Like a major revamp cuz frost plays well. It's just in PvE it's one button. Like in PvE, you should have at least something to do. >> Severely each spec needs a major revamp with retribution paladin leading the

[30:03] charge here. And generally, as you would imagine, it's the weaker specs on top. So, just something I think that's kind of just baked into class changes as a whole and kind of a boring entry because again, it's pretty much 100% chance that

[30:15] [music] changes, but for the sake of thoroughess, I just wanted to mention it. Next, we have playable high elves for both the Horde and Alliance. So, kind of a pandin type of dynamic here where I guess you would probably do a

[30:27] short quest line and at the end you choose a faction or something. [music] And the closest thing on the survey is this chart for the most popular new race quests with Like I said, guys, I like elves. I my my

[30:42] YouTube editor put out a YouTube short that is titled I like elves, which I don't know what Taylor I don't know. know. Anyway, Elves are cool. Okay, el I mean

[30:56] wrong. Oh, is it not? Is it like something else? Elves. I like elves, guys. Like blood elves, high elves. Give me an elf, man. Like I I I I like I I like elves. Okay. I played a blood elf on retail for years. They look cool.

[31:11] second place behind blood elves. Other popular choices are the goblins [music] from Cataclysm, Drai from the Burning Crusade, ogres have been a pretty popular request, [music] but you also have Wargan Dan, Dark Aaron Dwarf, and

[31:26] in general a completely new race unique to Classic Plus. And further down at 14% is no new races. Next is revisiting known but unexplored zones. Visiting zones that were part of Warcraft history but were never the original such as

[31:43] Mount Hyel, [music] Aldum, Gilaeus. So another really common request. You'll see this in pretty much everyone's wish list and that's reflected in the public poll. [music] Um for the most part people want it. Kind

[31:55] of funny to hear that one of the options is yes, but only done well. As if the alternative is, yeah, but they have to be really shitty and poorly implemented. [music] just have this for every question? Maybe it's that people's

[32:09] expectations are so low that when [laughter] it comes to Blizzard, you can do this, but [music] just to be clear, clear, >> make it so it doesn't suck balls.

[32:21] >> Player housing is a controversial one instance. personalized [music] housing for players in guilds. I couldn't find anything on the public survey for this one, so I guess I'll just use my opinion as filler. I do think that world

[32:33] presence is [music] very important in vanilla, so I'm kind of wary of housing, >> As long as it doesn't remove, you know, a bunch of reasons to be in the world, [music] you could do everything in your garrison, right? I think that's an

[32:47] It's possible that it could be done well in vanilla. I just have to be instant it. And some of you might know that they did plan it as far back as pre-release Stormwind. That was supposed to be a housing district. And there also existed

[33:04] houses and whatnot. So, they definitely had it in mind, but it was cut for various reasons. This [music] infamous people could like block off important areas. But the fact that it was intended

[33:18] gives it more authority for some players. I guess for me it's just heavily dependent on what the system actually looks like. Next week, >> I don't know, man. I I'm just like there's some things it's just like nah.

[33:30] Like you just don't need it, you know? I feel like housing is just like nah. I think for retail it kind of makes sense. Retail is all about collecting different things. And the house gives you a place to store it. And retail's so

[33:44] darn big anyway. A house you can maybe argue brings people together more than it makes people further apart. But classic WoW, it's already small. You towns. Why Why would you want to have someone not be in the town and go to

[33:58] their house? I I don't I just No thanks. No. Like it makes sense in retail, but >> We have achievements, a system to track game milestones and accomplishments. Another controversial one here. Some people believe achievements were kind of

[34:11] the rise of the game being hyper objective oriented and every action needing to have some sort of tangible reward to bombard dopamine receptors. it as another form of progression to work towards. The poll did have this

[34:26] question and the community responded fairly [music] split but leaning in favor. Crossro play the ability with >> I think he had the wrong screenshot >> I think he had the wrong screenshot here.

[34:40] achievements? Um, I don't know. For achievements, I can totally see how it makes it too sweaty, right? Like example, there's still an advancement tab. And I guess there are still some

[34:54] very few. But when you play Minecraft, it's just so sandboxy, right? Like you make your own fun. You have to think about what you want to do. And anything is technically the right thing to do cuz

[35:07] you're doing it. And like when I think of classic WoW, like I like the idea of like you could do anything you want. And I think achievements can maybe hinder generalized, it might not be a big deal. But once it becomes link AOTC,

[35:23] you know, link gladiator, and it's like it just becomes like, okay, h, you know, >> leaning in favor. Cross play, the realms for dungeons, battlegrounds, and other instanced activities. It doesn't

[35:39] explicitly state grading here. I feel like if that was the intention, it would list it. But regardless, it's another controversial one, and it's something that eventually came to retail in a few different forms. First was the crossrem

[35:52] zoning in as the population started to thin out in order to keep the world alive. And then this sort of evolved further and further to linked realms. And [music] I think today you could do like crossrem raiding with other guilds,

[36:05] played retail in a very long time. The argument for it is that it keeps options open, especially for servers that start to die or become imbalanced between factions. This was an issue that did happen with the 2019 run of Classic. So,

[36:21] in that case, a system like this would be beneficial, at least for the players argument against it, as you would imagine, is that it dilutes the server's community, which is a fairly defining feature for vanilla. Many people agree.

[36:35] I couldn't find an equivalent question for this on the public poll, but if I that people would be pretty split on. Next, we have war mode. As an alternative to PvP servers, this mode would allow you to opt into PvP in the

[36:49] open world via a toggle in main faction cities. So, this was a BFA feature when they did away with the old PvP server system where you would be able to toggle this mode in the city and it would put you in a layer with other people who are

[37:04] in [music] the same mode as you chose. You get bonus rewards. You got access to new talents and stuff. However, okay, this this might be my own personal problem, but anytime there's an option to create more layers and phases of

[37:17] something, it just feels kind of bad because it removes immersion. For example, if you um run into a city with war mode on and then turn it off and disappeared. Where's my continuity, man? That guy

[37:31] just vanished. What? Anytime there's another layer spun up and someone just van like disappears, it's like wait, it just instantly takes you out of the experience of playing on a server and playing the game and it's

[37:44] a server and playing the game and it's like that just kind of sucks, right? the um as opposed to you [snorts] always see everyone. There's no layering, there's just have a community of people you're playing on that server with. Um having

[37:58] said that, there are drawbacks to like that kind of a thing, right? If if a people before it starts to lag, then you just need like a billion surfers. And if season just said, then they all like half of them die 3 months in and then

[38:12] the next major patch comes out and then there's a queue time again and then the servers are too darn packed. So you need to put up more servers and then the for a bit but then they die and you have to consolidate and it's just like so

[38:24] much work and like it's just confusing too. So I don't know maybe there's some middle ground but I in terms of immersion anything that does this just ends up sucking. Like it it just takes you right out of the right out of the

[38:37] world. for this question. It seems like it would just be strictly for toggling PvP on and off. This is a majority no from the >> my my my proposed solution, as much as it sucks to say this, is you have a

[38:50] it sucks to say this, is you have a handful of pop in realms and right on launch or major patches, there's going to be so many people that they're going to fill up. So, what do you do? Well, you introduce layering just to handle

[39:05] the amount of people for launches and expansions and new patches, but then as layer and have it feel like a real server again. So hopefully within a few

[39:17] weeks of a new patch, you're back down to just one layer and it feels like a server again. But that way you don't have to spin up new realms every time there's a new patch or new like a bunch of new servers. It's just okay, let's

[39:29] add in some layers for a few weeks so that we don't lag, so that we can play the game and not have a 50 hour queue time, but then let's get back down to one to so it feels good again asap, right? And we target that. That's that's

[39:42] if that actually works. >> Public poll. Personally, I do think it [music] is kind of an anti- vanilla feature. PvP servers are kind of core to the game, like them or hate them. But it is closer at a second glance because the

[39:56] yes option is kind of split between yes with XP bonuses and yes but with no bonus. So it is another fairly close answer here. Next we have three questions. Uh one for [music] 10 player raids, another for 20 and another for

[40:10] 40. >> And the closest public poll is this. through seven with 20 winning by a pretty large margin. 10 is third, right behind the standard since Burning Crusade [music] 25, and 40 is all the

[40:24] way down at six with 5.1. This one surprised me. I guess I'm in the minority here, but I do think that 40 player raids are a pretty big part of the identity of vanilla considering that, you know, it was Burning Crusade

[40:38] is where they scaled them down. And they did that for a reason. But I don't know, there's just something about gathering 40 different players that's very memorable of vanilla World of Warcraft to me. I know that they're annoying and

[40:50] they're harder to set up and coordinate, especially for raid leaders. It's a nightmare, but for me, I don't know, it kind of falls in line with the slippery slope mentality. If you remove the most annoying thing in the game, there's

[41:02] always a new most annoying thing to be pruned until, you know, eventually you're not even playing vanilla World of Warcraft anymore. Some people say slippery slope [music] fallacy to which I respond told you so by the way. I

[41:15] don't [laughter] know. I guess I am in the minority but [music] I say that 40 player raids as a primary with 20 player raids as [music] kind of like a support just like how they did the ZG AQ20 dynamic that vanilla had. Next we

[41:29] >> You know I I respect Mad C a lot for for this. you know, he he is in the minority here, but he says it and recognizes it and doesn't change his position. He the W that he wants to play, but understands he's in the minority. It's

[41:43] like, okay, you know, if that goes through, then like, you know, it is what it is. Um, I agree with the majority here. I I do hold a lot of minority opinions as well, but the majority here to me, like I I I

[41:56] like 20man raids. When I'm when I'm streaming, I can fill a 10 or 20 man. I I can play with a bunch of you guys and different like it's just like it's a headache which like to Matt season's

[42:09] playing classic that's part of it and it's like yeah touche but for me when I played Sod doing 10man raids like I I really I it was just so accessible and I think for a lot of you guys when you played Sod BFA uh BFD phase one you

[42:25] could play with your friends get a raid go in get out get some loot have fun really accessible it's just really nice. So, I don't know. I get the argument 40 is more epic and more classic and there's more logistics and that's part

[42:37] of it. I totally get it, but I I still like 20 man really. [laughter] Um, it's just yeah, especially because I suck as a raid leader, like or 20 is just so much more manageable, you know?

[42:52] >> Vanilla had Next, we have various [music] graphic improvements similar to the character model question from earlier. just higher resolution textures, more realistic lights, shadows, and so on. Unfortunately,

[43:04] there's no matching [music] poll for this, but the closest I could find is Unreal Engineesque graphics [music] on a 1 to 10 scale with the majority heavily against it. Slightly less kind of indifferent and 14% for it. New trade

[43:18] skills, another pretty common request. Usually, you'll see this in the form of the [music] longlost survival skill where you'd make campfires and torches to light up dark areas of the game. This one was actually implemented by the

[43:30] Turtle Wild private server. You know, the one that Blizzard shut down because for this one is an overwhelming yes at 60%, 27% say no, just stick with the originals while the remainder are in different. New battlegrounds. Again,

[43:44] another very common request. As you'd expect, people are generally in favor as vanilla World of Warcraft only has the three original battlegrounds, the Warang Gulch, Orathy Basin, and Altrich Valley. As for new race and class combinations,

[43:59] down the middle within the community, I'd say. Keep in mind, this isn't newer [music] races or classes, just combinations. Like remember in Cataclysm, we got gnome priests, uh, night elf mages, for instance. This was

[44:13] a resounding yes, but only if the lore [music] makes sense. So, you wouldn't or something. [laughter] Next is new class, but specifically one that's unique to classic plus. So, no death knights or monks or anything. And this

[44:28] one [music] surprised me with 42% saying no. And behind is yes, but only completely new classes, [music] followed lastly by the ones that we've seen from other expansions. >> I'm I'm a no on this one. I

[44:43] think there's enough to try to balance already. The worst thing you could do is death knight as an example and it sorts a wrench into the whole thing. It's like first. If you want to add a new race, sure. New raceclass combos, sure. New

[45:00] lot going on. just like, oh, throw in a new class. Just feels like, yeah, maybe five to 10 years later or something like like like let's push that down the road a long long long long time, but stick to

[45:14] >> This one, if you forced me to guess, I would have thought that it would have been a resounding yes since people get so excited for new classes. [music] I'm you're on the no side, I would like to hear your reasoning why. My guess is

[45:28] that it [music] would just be too far of a leap and it wouldn't feel like vanilla as the original collection of classes are so iconic to it, [music] which I have other options here that I feel the same way about and they go the opposite

[45:42] direction like no 40man raids or align shamans and horde paladins. So yeah, shamans and horde paladins. So yeah, this one surprised me. the So, one of my takes that I feel like people don't like is I want classic plus to be the worst

[45:59] is I want classic plus to be the worst when it launches. the best when they launch. Like Season of Discovery, people loved phase one people were out there. I want it to be the worst

[46:15] when it launches so that we have room to grow and change and add and remove and like meld this thing into something awesome

[46:27] many years down the line because it's going to take time to build something going to take time to build something truly remarkable. Anything truly remarkable takes time. So you can't have it, you don't want it to even be that

[46:40] like it shouldn't hit hit hit on launch. It should be solid. It should be a good It should be solid. It should be a good foundation that is moldable to what we foundation that is moldable to what we want it to become. Prime example,

[46:54] Runescape Old School launched and it was kind of a failure. Not many people played, but years and years of giving it love and listening to the community and giving the community what they want and giving this love letter to the community

[47:06] this thing. Let's slowly change things, but only what you guys want us to change. Nothing besides that. And then over five, six years, boom, it starts to

[47:18] blow up because it actually has what like they listened. I want classic plus Like a great foundation, but I want it to get better over time, right? So that's that's what I think. >> And lastly, we have transmogrification,

[47:35] which is another huge controversial one. The ability to change the appearance of >> Yeah, every everyone thinks it's a weird take, which every time I say that, it with Yeah, people seem to disagree with this one, but I still think it

[47:50] right. We want a really good foundation so that it can become something really so that it can become something really really really great. Yeah, I guess so. >> Be available in rested areas, dungeons,

[48:02] or raids. So everything but PvP, including the open world. I suppose this one I'm kind of against. [music] I think that it's a pretty critical part people are actually wearing. Clown [music] suits are like handinhand with

[48:17] I >> my entire channel Avatar is the warrior clown suit for >> the Blackwing Lar. So, here's what the community thinks with the majority saying no. About half of

[48:32] that is at yes with the rest just being no opinion, which is oddly split up into two categories. So, yeah, very controversial. I personally say no. People want it obviously so you can look cooler and better express yourself as

[48:47] they say. And [music] this is just my opinion, but I feel like in many ways the lack of a transmog [music] is actually more expressive because what you're wearing kind of tells a story about your character. It tells other

[49:02] >> Yeah. >> What kind of a player you are, your rating progression. It >> I I'm very anti-transmog. I mean, Mad Season is expressing this very well. Like, bro, if you

[49:15] that I don't feel that strongly about, and there's some things that I feel very strongly about. If you want to kill Classic Plus on launch, add in flying mounds, transmog, in a shop. GG, bro. You know, like there's some

[49:29] awful, right? >> If you're a leveler, what zones you around. You'd be like, >> I'm anti-transmog toggle because it running up to someone and saying like, "Oh, sick axe." And they see a different

[49:44] axe than you see. Like it's the same argument with like layering and phasing. It just kind of sucks for immersion. It just takes you out right away when people on their screens are seeing different things than you're seeing on

[49:57] your screen. So no, no toggle, no transmog, just it doesn't need it. It's classic. Wow. >> Oh, looks like he did the dead mines. Or progressing through Molten Core. They're probably a new guild. or that guy looks

[50:10] like he's a pretty new player. Or maybe this person is obviously a high ranking player in this guild because Nyx Ramis just came out and he has so much of the gear already. >> Or maybe he egregiously swipes his

[50:22] >> True. >> The point I'm trying to make is that what your character wears tells such a story in vanilla. And usually what happens with transmog is that they people just kind of mog into the boring

[50:37] tier sets because they look the most cohesive, especially in vanilla since compared to retail wo which you know has over a hundred now probably right. I kind of run into the problem of everybody being clones of one another

[50:52] and just doing the same boring things. And I don't know I feel like it would just massively take away from the old school aesthetic of the game. I think it's more important than things like a new class. How your character looks is

[51:05] one of the most valued forms of character progression in an MMO. I mean, why else do people pay like thousands of [ __ ] dollars on cash shops to buy cool looking mounts or pets or whatever? And it's not even just the MMO. So many

[51:19] games out there have these cosmetic cash shops. And it's for a reason. People pay pay out the ass for them? Because they value them. And because they are valued, some form of functional character

[51:34] deal, >> how much you heal, how much damage you mitigate. I will say this, for competitive PvP games, having your game freeto play is important because critical mass is important. The more

[51:48] people that play your game means the more competitive it can be. If there's a it's just going to be the same people queuing into each other. Like, you need critical mass in a PvP game. So having freeto play to obtain that is very

[52:00] important, but you still need to monetize. So freeto play plus skins Counterstrike, Fortnite, these kind of games. Like, yeah, it makes sense. Even New World there was a box price, no sub with skins. There's different models.

[52:16] For Classic Plus, I'm hoping it's just the like, if it's a box price in the monthly, I'm fine with that. If it's just monthly, I'm really fine with that. just monthly, I'm really fine with that. But if there's a shop and monthly

[52:30] and a bar like yeah >> is evidenced with how much money people spend on them. They're valued super high within gaming at large. MMOs especially since it's a multiplayer game and you know you have this added element of

[52:43] you're not the only one looking at your armor set, right? A lot of the times you want to show off cool armor sets or other cosmetics to other people. So yeah, anything aesthetic-wise or looks, I think you have to be very careful,

[52:58] especially if you're doing a classic plus and you kind of want to maintain it's something that can get out of control really quickly. I can probably make a whole video about this as you can tell, but I'm kind of getting off topic

[53:11] here. But that was most of the survey and the closest matching public surveys from the Classic Plus project. There are many more questions on this site that for yourselves if you want, but I just wanted to stick with the ones that

[53:25] Blizzard asked because I feel like those are the most important and they [music] what the game will look like on the again, not guaranteed, but 99% chance. this what this video was until the very end. He took the Blizzard survey and

[53:42] answered them through the community poll, which isn't one to one, but it skimmed through just the questions Blizzard asked. Oh, it's really smart. I the last minute of the video. >> That's my opinion. Just announced at

[53:56] Blizzcon in September. But that's about it. Out of all of the information that's publicly available between the features [music] of Season of Discovery, which was a testing ground, and the official survey, this is the closest idea of what

[54:10] [music] I do have some more videos planned in the future. These days I'm doing a lot of OSRS as well, but I do like to check in from time to time into World of Warcraft and I'll try to be relatively

[54:22] active with things related to Classic Plus specifically if and when new information drops. But other than that, thank you for watching. Like the video if you liked it because I will see you in the next one. Peace. Mad Season with

[54:36] another banger. I um I share a lot of the same opinions as Mad Season on this stuff and I share a lot of the same opinions as Guzu a lot of the same opinions as Guzu and Savix and myself Mad Se like I feel

[54:51] like we there's like it's like yes like not not everything right there's we I have differences of opinions here and there but like by and large I think Mad Season and I very same wavelength Guu and I right like it's like yep yes yes

[55:06] yes impressive circle jerk Wait, is it a circle jerk if you agree with someone's viewpoint? I'm just saying there's some people I completely disagree with. Like um like Peekaboo, a guy's clueless, right? Completely has no idea what's

[55:21] going on. But someone like Mad Season, like Yeah. Yeah.