Pig & Whistle Tales - A World of Warcraft Podcast

Classic Plus Survey: What's Next?

• Gabriel • Season 5 • Episode 20

Share episode

Praises or critics can be send here! Also if there's anything you wish to hear about please send your requests here!

The Classic Plus survey raises critical questions about how Blizzard might extend the WoW Classic experience with new features while maintaining its distinctive charm. We analyze potential additions ranging from cross-faction class availability to WoW tokens and explore what they could mean for the game's future.

• Weekly reset information includes Collector's Bounty with 5% increased drop rates for pre-Dragonflight rare items
• Shamans for Alliance and Paladins for Horde would break faction identity but provide more player options
• Collections UI and account-wide unlocks would improve convenience but might diminish character uniqueness
• In-game events between major content releases could solve the raid logging problem
• Class talent adjustments could make underpowered specs viable while maintaining classic combat feel
• WoW Token could address the botting problem despite being controversial
• Visiting unexplored zones like Mount Hyjal and Gilneas would add fresh content within established lore
• Cross-realm play could help maintain healthy server populations

Tune in next week for part two where we'll continue breaking down the remaining survey questions and discuss the biggest proposal at the end.

Hope you all enjoy and hope you relate to any of these stories. And I will speak to you all in the next episode!

Want some 3D printed Merch, find it here!
https://pigandwhistletales.etsy.com

Support the show here:


Socials :
Twitch : https://www.twitch.tv/pigandwhistletales
Youtube : https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAOi6rHO3x90lOmmb82Jv1w
Website : https://www.pigandwhistletales.com/
Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/pigandwhistletales/
Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/PigAndWhistleTales

Try out Buzzsprout yourself! https://www.buzzsprout.com/?referrer_id=1154066

Listen to the podcast on other platforms:
https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/pig-whistle-tales-from-azeroth-gabriel-nsa902LrQVw/
https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/pig-whistle-tales-from-azeroth-1315927
https://open.spotify.com/show/5ZTkLtQvRSm4PStUfZquWk
https://podcastaddict.com/podcast/3032607

The Music at the start is from Tony Catch they do many amazing cover songs for games you can find the link here:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHiF

The Gaming Blender
We mash genres. We pitch games. You question our sanity.

Listen on: Apple Podcasts   Spotify

Support the show

Support the show here:

Speaker 1:

Music. Thank you, hello and welcome to the Pig and Whistle Tales from Azeroth. As always here at the Pig and Whistle Inn in Stormwind, I go for a variety of subjects. With regards to World of Warcraft, grab a bottle or a pint, sit back and enjoy. With regards to World of Warcraft, grab a bottle or a pint, sit back and enjoy this episode.

Speaker 1:

We will be finally talking about the Classic Plus survey. That happened a couple weeks ago almost A little bit late to the party there, but been a little bit hectic, we should say, over the past couple weeks. But, as always, we'll start off with the weekly news order. Is your world boss? For this week? They are located within ashkahet. As well as the godfather, you can locate him within the undermine. You have collector's bounty and burning crusade time walking. Burning crusade time walking. You can get cosmetics, reputation mounts, pets, etc. As well as the collector's bounty.

Speaker 1:

This is actually something new and that is being introduced. This is something that allows you to have easier access at getting rarer rewards from older content. So anything pre-Dragonflight has a 5% chance increase to drop from said boss or whatever it may drop from. This is really good because it allows for people who have been farming stuff for so long to actually have that better chance at acquiring these items. These are anything from mounts to legendaries items. These are anything from mounts to legendaries, so from invincible at the top of ice crown citadel, uh, all the way to thunder fury into molten core. You have an increased at five percent chance to obtain this, and this isn't like oh, you increase it by a certain amount, it is a flat five percent. So if it's one percent, drop chance, like originally, you just add another five onto it. If it's 0.5, add five to it. It's that simple. Uh, deep six is your brawl for the week. This is a 6v6 battleground that focuses on just essentially, um, being a bit more impactful in a battleground setting, because what you do matters, as there is less people within that or, yeah, there is less people within that battleground, so you need to pull your weight a bit more. It's very simple, quite good fun, and this is on maps such as Templar, kotmogu, warsong Gulch, etc.

Speaker 1:

Now let's start off with this survey. That's the one. This was sent out to a lot of people, myself included, a couple of weeks ago, and I've been meaning to talk about it, but there's been other things that I've been wanting to do so. This is a survey that is going to basically determine what Classic Plus is. Okay, classic Plus, and there are other questions on this, but this is what is going to be the next iteration of World of Warcraft 4, blizzard.

Speaker 1:

Okay, now I'm going to go over my thoughts on these features or the questions that they've asked, and I'm going to give my essentially opinions on it and as to if it's good, bad, indifferent, what might hinder it, what might not hinder it. There is a lot of these questions, so I might make a part two of this, but we'll see how it goes. We'll see how it goes. So, firstly, they wanted to ask about the feature. So I'm going to say the the feature, and then I'm going to give a description of that feature. Okay, this is what they've done in the survey. The feature is playable shamans on the alliance side and they say about playable paladins on horde side. So we'll do them as one, basically, but the introduction of shamans to alliance and the introduction of paladins to the horde, I think that it would be weird for classic to have this.

Speaker 1:

I get that it would be very fun to open up a new class for these, uh, for the factions okay, and it would feel like a new class completely. But where are you going to put, like, the shaman quests or the paladin quests for these factions? There's going to be something that is completely different for them. Um, and how are you going to fit it in lore wise? I get that you're going to have, um, like dwarves. Dwarves are very good when it comes to being shamans. Uh, as you have wildhammers and the wildhammer dwarves in the hinterlands that you could be like, oh, they taught the dwarves how to be shamans. And I suppose you do have torrens, who are very much, um, I forget the name of them, but there are torren paladins. But I just don't think that that's great. They could maybe go with the forsaken, as they do allow people who will the light in the forsaken to be brought back. Now you actually have light wielding forsaken, so you do have that avenue to open up, but in my honest opinion, I would say no to this one, and that's really strange, because I thought that it would be cool to open this up. But I like the dynamic of having paladins. If you wanted to raid in a horde or alliance guild, you'd have paladins, or guilds, you'd have shamans, kind of deal. I think that it's a no, though I don't think that this is needed. I would like to see a new class, potentially, but I don't know, I can't remember if they asked about that. But a new class would be kind of cool. Something completely different, maybe like a little tinker or something like that.

Speaker 1:

You know who knows Collections? A UI based system for pets, mounts and toys to free up inventory space. I don't think that they need this at the moment in Classic. If they were to continuously add more and more content into classic then, yeah, potentially they would need the collection tab, because the more stuff that you add into classic, the more mounts you get, the more pets you get, the more cosmetics you get, the more whatever you might get. So, potentially going forward, yes, but at but at the moment I would say no.

Speaker 1:

I wouldn't agree with a collections tab kind of like how it is in retail. Retail needs it because of the amount of stuff that there is, but honestly, there is not a lot happening there at all. By the way, I do hope that you cannot hear that, but there is a fan behind me blasting like right behind me, because it has been so hot during like throughout europe for the past, like few days or week or so. It's ridiculous, um. So apologies if you can hear that, but it's necessary, otherwise I may or may not pass out while doing this. So it is what it is, um. But yeah, back to it. I think that you do not need the collections tab as of yet.

Speaker 1:

Okay, once they release a lot more, then potentially very much potentially, but not yet account wide collections, making all pets, mounts and toys available to all characters on your account. I will. It's tough. It's because you're going to have people say, oh my God, no, your character needs to feel special, your character needs to have a place. They need to earn their place within it. And it's like, yeah, that's all well and good, but the thing is I'm just logging on to my main getting gold easier and then send it over to buy a mount. You know it's nothing really special. I'm kind of using my higher level to do these things.

Speaker 1:

Anyway for me, I would say yes to this, and I would say yes purely on the basis of I don't think it would affect anything really, I think if you've earned it on that character, like a PvP reward thing. I think you keep them sort of things relatively what's the word for it confined to that character. But if you have something as simple as, like a night saber mount, I think that these sort of things should be fine to switch between characters or share between characters. I think that if you get a super rare drop, maybe as well, like Zoolian Tiger or the Raptor, etc. But I do think that the simpler mounts and collectibles should be shared, but I don't believe that the more unique stuff should. Okay.

Speaker 1:

1v1 duel arenas the ability to go into a special dueling area for 1v1 contests that are viewable by spectators. I would like this on retail, so I'm going to say yes to this on classic, but I do believe that only certain specs will go into these arenas. I think you're looking at mages, warlocks, priests, rogues. I think you're looking at these sort of things because, depending on if you can and can't use consumables in these like arena style contests, some classes are just going to not have a fun time. They really, really aren't. If you sorry, my voice is going gone. If you match up against the mages warrior, you may as well alt f4. Okay. If you've got no consumes or anything like that, you may as well alt f4. It's just not going to be worth your time to stick around in that arena. So if they had consumables, yes, potentially. But again, we've seen this in pvp, like classic pvp tournaments before that there's always going to be a stronger class and that class is warlock. Warlock is always going to be the class to be. So you know it's tough.

Speaker 1:

I would like to see this in retail and classic. So I'm gonna go yes, I'm gonna go yes with this, and the only downside is I obviously see people being like well, this is unplayable for warriors or paladins or whatever it might be, but that's classic. That's not a 1v1 jewel arena thing. That's a balance issue that classic has had since day one back in 2004, where mages could absolutely wipe the floor with warriors and warlocks could wipe the floor with anyone. You know that kind of thing. So I would like to see this in classic plus or retail. Honestly, retail would be good.

Speaker 1:

Uh, new player character models, character models similar to those that used, uh, in modern world of warcraft. Now, modern world of warcraft character models were brought in during warlords of draenor and funny fact, someone told me about this warlords of draenor from getting these new wow character models to the present time is a longer time span than when we got them. So so, from the start of World of Warcraft to when we got them, it is now a longer time span that we've had these WoW models, in comparison to when WoW first released, to when it got the updated, which I find crazy to believe because it was Warlords of Draenor. It came out, didn't it? And Warlords of Draenor was 2014. Okay, just let that sink in 2014.

Speaker 1:

So yeah, I would have to say that they would need to change the character models, but I'm honestly impartial to it. I think that there's a certain charm to the classic world of warcraft models. I would say that there's a very classic charm to it and that by taking this away could ruin the experience for classic. It genuinely could, and that's the sad thing. But I still think that it's not a bad idea to dabble in.

Speaker 1:

I think you could allow people to potentially have the updated versions if they so chose to, maybe kind of like how you did the updated texture models in Cataclysm. Some people might want it, some people might not. So give the option to turn it on and off. Basically, that would be my opinion on it. I wouldn't be against this, but I wouldn't be for it. On it. I I wouldn't be against this, but I wouldn't be for it. Okay, I just think it's a impartial change that wouldn't really be needed or wanted, but it certainly it wouldn't be. The worst thing in the world is what we'll say. It wouldn't be the worst thing in the world. Uh, in-game events, new events that offer different small quests and casual gameplay around the world. These would release between large updates. Yes, I think that this is what classic needs.

Speaker 1:

I think classic very much in its whole lifespan has been oh my god, the leveling has been so, so good. This is amazing. Oh my god. Molten core is so amazing. I, I can't wait to do Blackwing Lair next patch. And then you do Molten Core for about eight weeks, let's say, let's say two months, okay, and then you get bored.

Speaker 1:

You start raid logging and there's nothing to do in between because you don't need any gear. You don't need to do Upper Blackrock Spire, Lower Blackrock Spire, you don't need to do upper black rock spire, lower black rock spire, you don't need to do these dungeons. You already have your previous trinket, you already have a talisman from molten core. You know you don't need these certain things, so you just raid log. And it desperately needs something in between to keep the player base coming back to play it day in, day out. And I know that you're obviously going to have a very dedicated amount of players for classic. You always will and always. You know that's going to be always happening. But this would help with that even more. It would keep a larger player base around for future raids to be released and give them time to release said raids. So I wouldn't be against this and I think that it's very much needed.

Speaker 1:

Okay, pet battles? That now, before you roll your eyes, I agree I don't think pet battles are needed. There is very few pets within classic, so I don't think that it's going to be a viable solution in the first place. But let's see select pets from the game world and have them compete head-to-head with other pets in turn-based battles. I did pet battles in warlords of draenor. I did a lot of pet battles in warlords of draenor, but I don't think pet battles are needed.

Speaker 1:

If they are added and it's an element of the game that people enjoy and actively pursue, perfect, I think. Add it. I think why not add it then? But personally I don't think it's needed. I don't see the value in it at all. But again, other people prefer this sort of thing to raiding or pvp, and that's completely fine. I understand that, because I enjoy pvp over everything. Yeah, so I understand enjoying something over another thing, but, um, yeah, I don't think it's needed. Okay, to clarify, I don't think any of this is needed, but I think some of it will be Leveling, profession improvements, ability to make more usable gear for yourself as you level and be able to craft it at level appropriate trade skilled levels.

Speaker 1:

I think that this is a great idea. This is expanding on the professions, and professions within classic are rather dull. To be honest, it's very much oh, I can use this for raid or I can't use this for raid. That's kind of it. There's no niche sort of category that you're going to put this in very rarely when leveling a profession. Are you like? Yes, this is a massive upgrade for me. You know you get it at max level leather working with your hide of the wild, or you get it at max blacksmithing with your lion's heart helm or something. You don't look at rough copper pants at level 10 and be like that's it. That's what's going to make or break this character them rough, rough copper pants. You know it's absolutely ludicrous. So I don't think, or no, sorry. I think that it is needed, that this is into, the game gets implemented. Okay, I think that it's absolutely needed.

Speaker 1:

Next one is new class abilities and spells. Brand new class abilities and or spells unique to this version of classic. I think you add new spells, spells that have never been seen before in world of warcraft. Or you take spells that have been in world of warcraft but adjust them, invoke the spirits, make it so that it casts four regrows in a row after a one second delay on each, or it casts four regrows on four random party members. You know something like that. Just take older or newer spells, I should say, and alter them slightly to make it fit what? What do you think? I think that that's a good way of implementing it, but I could be completely wrong. Some people might not agree, some people might disagree. I think that this is a very solid way of doing it and I don't see a problem with this. So I would say yes to the new class abilities and spells. I really, really would.

Speaker 1:

The next part of this, I'm just double checking. Yeah, we may need to do a part two of this, so the next part is very much the same thing honor reward redesigns move honor rewards away from the original wow model and towards a more seasonal model where new honor rewards are added to coincide with new pve raid tier updates. Yes, 100. Yes, pvp. At the start, world of warcraft was used only to get gear for pve. Once blackwing lair had come out, pvp gear useless, absolutely useless. If they were to add more seasons when blackwing lair came out, when, uh, uncourage came out, it would give the pvpers of classic an actual excuse to do pvp, rather than sit there with an ash candy in hand and be like, oh no, I do pvpP because you know I have the best weapons, and then you go into a battleground and you're absolutely shocking at the game. You know not speaking from experience of someone that I've seen but yeah, it is what it is.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I would very much say that this is needed. This is a very much needed part of classic and it would be long overdue if it went through. Okay, it would be super, super long overdue and I think it's very much needed, okay. So, with that being said, they should implement this as quickly as possible. They really, really should. It's pretty good the change. It's a spectacular change that is needed and, to be honest, it just means that it would be following the same cycle as retail in terms of PvP seasons. Pve seasons, you know, a season release alongside a raid tier, that's fine. That, I think, works, works really well, but they need to constantly update it. Maybe add an extra battleground or two would be really exciting, and I think that's where it would change for a lot of players in the game. The next one is uh, wow token. A lot of you are going to say no, okay, a lot of you are going to say no, but hear me out on this.

Speaker 1:

The biggest problem world of warcraft classic has is the botting problem. I play world of warcraft on a classic realm and the amount of bots that I see walking around throughout the evening. I play late at night, so I see a lot of bots, basically, and I see them all throughout the night. I see hunters, I see hunters, I see hunters, so many hunters that are botting, making gold and basically selling that gold. I think that the WoW token stops this and I get that like, like it's not ideal, but let's face it. It's a player problem that we have created by buying gold ourselves. Okay, if players didn't buy gold, then this wouldn't be a problem at all. It just wouldn't, would it like? I'm telling you that right now it wouldn't be a problem at all, but it is, and so we're here. This is why the WoW token exists.

Speaker 1:

Sometimes I think that it would be good. I think that it would allow people to strive to make gold in Classic another end goal for Classic and you can pay for your game time with your in-game gold, and I think that it's very, very useful to do and something that should be implemented. If they did a classic plus and you might all, everyone just thinks oh yeah, but it's a money grab, that's all it is. It's a money grab. Don't buy gold, then why do people buy gold? Is ridiculous. It's absolutely stupid and isn't needed. So it it is what it is. It really is what it is, and I think that it's needed for as long as people buy gold from third parties. That's all the. So I say yes to wow token. A lot of people are going to think that's controversial. It's a problem that we have created as a player base and this is the best solution for it, in my honest opinion.

Speaker 1:

The next one is class talent adjustments, streamlining and improving class talent trees to make weaker specializations and classes more viable, while still maintaining the overall feel and flow to classic combat. Sound thing is classic combat is very, very slow. Classic combat is very much crossbow, crossbow, crossbow. Can you guess what's next crossbow? So they would need to really redesign the talents and allow other things to be useful. That's it. And to really change up the dynamic of classic raiding or rotations or just best ability to press or abilities to press kind of deal. They would really need to change it up a lot. So I would say yes to the class talent adjustment. I really would, and I would think that this is a great gameplay improvement.

Speaker 1:

Playable high elves, playable high elf race for the horde and the alliance. You know what? As long as they are the really ugly model of high elves, yes, I would be so down for that. Now, the problem that I have with this is obviously starting zone, because they would have to go into eversong woods. They are high elves, they originate from quailthalassa. All up the way up there was zulaman, the sunwell, all of that shenanigans. So they would have to make silvermoon and they would have to make eversong Woods and Ghostlands. They could go completely different, but I would imagine they stick with somewhat a familiar look to the zones and stuff. So I would say yes, on the one condition that it's the ugliest fuck models from Classic, because that's what makes it so much more fun and enjoyable. That's my opinion on that. Um, where am I account?

Speaker 1:

Wide perks and progression system, a system to allow you to gather points and spend them on account. Wide bonuses such as quality of life and convenience, encouraging playing alts or specializing in specific activities. Now, this is good. This screams to me like the talent system before the talent system. So for those of you that don't know, in alpha and beta World of Warcraft the talent system was very much. You got a certain amount of points and you learned whatever you wanted, and this could be from nature resistance all the way to certain spells, uh, damage increases. So this is a very open-ended book and these perks were going to probably act more like diablo perks, where you have four specific ones that you can continuously improve upon. I wouldn't think it's very in-depth, but that's what I'm going to go with. I would say yes just out of the curiosity aspect, but I don't think it would be a necessity by any means. I don't think it would be a necessity, so I would say yes, purely out of the I would want to see what they come up with kind of deal now.

Speaker 1:

The next one is visiting known but unexplored zones, visiting zones that were part of warcraft history but never playable in original wow mount, high gel, oldham and gilneas now, high gel being the biggest one, obviously, oldham being the second more known one, and then gilneas being at the bottom of silver pine. I would say yes, obviously, because it allows the use of additional content in these zones. Is there any others that we were kind of missing? You have the zones that are behind uh or above for eastern plaguelands. You could theoretically turn these into 12th of last, even without the high elves, and have that as a new zone, uh, but I would say I would say yes to these. It depends if they would go off script and do a zone that has never existed in wow before, in which case I think there'll be an even better improvement. But who knows, who knows, with that. I would say yes to this.

Speaker 1:

Next one is interesting player housing instance, personalized housing for players and guidess. How do you do this in Classic? That's the one that I want to know, would they just copy and paste the retail version that they're doing, because I would be very intrigued to see how that works. I would say no. I would say no to player housing in Classic for the reason of people want it to be a community driven thing, and I think that this would split a lot of people up because you're, in your own instant, the version of world of warcraft, kind of deal. So I would say no to the player housing. Strangely enough, um, yeah, I don't really have a lot more to say about it. I don't know how they would implement it, what the graphics would be like, kind of deal. Oh well, achievements A system to track game milestones and accomplishments.

Speaker 1:

I think you should only get achievements if you obtain a legendary, an Atiesh, a Thunderfury, a Sulphurus, you know these sort of things, all legendary sort of weapons within Warcraft lore. So if you obtain something like Rock de la and lock de la who, which are unique hunter weapons from molten core and you could do a specific quest like these iconic weapons, I think yes for achievements, but I don't think that they are necessary in any way, shape or form. So I would say no to achievements. I don't think they're necessary, I don't think they're useful. It'd be cool to track these things, but not needed at all.

Speaker 1:

The next one is cross realm play. This is where I'll end it for this one. But cross realm play I think that you do need this. Okay, ability to group with friends from other realms for dungeons, battlegrounds and other instanced activity. Yes, now I would say yes if a realm reaches below a specific threshold. If that realm hits this marker and there are other realms who would bring it up to a specific amount, okay, so it can't exceed 10 000 players, but it has less than 3k players. This realm, this one, has 5k, so you put them together 8k. I think that that would help with the population density of the servers and I think it would make for healthy populations, which is what you want in classic. You don't want a super one-sided population. So I would say yes to a certain degree with this sort of thing, and I think that a lot of people will obviously disagree with me with that, but I think that it would be something very, very useful that could be utilised in the future even more to help with population density. That is where I'll end it for this one.

Speaker 1:

We've still got a few to go over. I will go over them in the next episode and because there is something big at the end of it that I would like to discuss, but you guys will have to tune in next week. I do apologize that there is another week to wait, but there is a lot of good questions that do come up, so I really hope that it will be worth it the way, but do check out all of the socials down below constant stuff happening. I just want to see etsy shop multiple things, um, but yeah, thank you all very much for listening and go. A val, a friend, goodbye, thank you.