The Formula

[Niyu]

Call it AI slop if you like. This actually require reading. Scary huh?

I've spent quite a bit of time thinking about why I keep looking at Vanilla/Vanilla+ servers and finding that something is always fundamentally wrong for me.

At first I thought I was simply looking for a Turtle WoW replacement. I don't think that's actually true.

What I really want is Vanilla WoW with a small number of improvements that enable the game rather than redesign it.

And there is a surprisingly big difference between those two things.

The best example I can think of is something as simple as larger bags.

A 36-slot bag sounds like a massive departure from Vanilla if you look at the number. In practice, it doesn't fundamentally change how your character plays. It doesn't make your class stronger. It doesn't remove the need for other players. It doesn't change faction identity, dungeon difficulty, raid mechanics, professions, PvP or progression.

It simply removes an inventory limitation that gets in the way of actually playing a rich endgame.

And once you have experienced that, it is surprisingly difficult to go back.

That's the kind of change I love.

Meaningful friction vs. pointless friction

I think this is ultimately the distinction I've been trying to make.

Vanilla has a lot of friction. Some of it is fantastic.

Having to find four other people for a dungeon is good friction.

Having to build a functioning group with a tank, healer and appropriate DPS is good friction.

Having to travel somewhere, prepare properly, learn an encounter and potentially wipe several times before succeeding is good friction.

Having rare items actually be rare is good friction.

Having professions matter because not everyone can effortlessly obtain everything is good friction.

Having a powerful character represent a substantial investment is good friction.

Having to empty your bags every five minutes because you have 16 slots is not good friction.

Neither is spending enormous amounts of time dealing with inconveniences that don't produce any interesting gameplay.

So I'm not interested in removing Vanilla's constraints wholesale.

I'm interested in removing the constraints that don't create gameplay while preserving the ones that do.

That's a much narrower philosophy than “Classic+.”

I don't actually want Vanilla+

At least not in the way the term is normally used.

I have absolutely nothing against new content.

New quests? Great.

A new dungeon? Fantastic.

A new zone that feels like it belongs in the old world? Sure.

New profession recipes? Interesting.

A new reputation faction, cosmetic items, optional questlines, additional leveling routes? Why not?

I can even accept occasional changes where there is a really good reason for them.

The important thing is that these additions should feel optional. They should give me more things to do without forcing the underlying game to become something else.

What I don't want is the constant philosophy of:

“Vanilla has a weakness, therefore we need to redesign it.”

Because eventually you aren't improving Vanilla anymore. You're making a different MMO.

Cross-faction systems are a good example.

I understand why people like them. I've learned to live with ordinary cross-faction functionality over the years, even though I don't particularly like what it does to the game.

But there is a difference between allowing people to cooperate across factions because it is convenient and actively dissolving faction separation in systems where that separation is part of the experience.

Cross-faction battlegrounds cross that line for me.

Battlegrounds aren't merely group content that happens to require players. The opposing factions are the point.

If I enter a battleground, I want the people on the other side to actually be the other faction.

That's not an arbitrary restriction. It's part of the identity of the game.

And honestly, adding cross-faction battlegrounds has made me reconsider how tolerant I want to be of cross-faction systems in general. If cross-faction cooperation is the starting point from which you eventually arrive at cross-faction battlegrounds, then I have a much stronger reason to question the starting point too.

At the very least, I'd love to see meaningful opt-outs.

If people want cross-faction, let them have it.

But if I want to play with the traditional faction restrictions intact, why shouldn't I be allowed to?

The same principle should apply to systems like group finding.

If there is a group finder, give people filters.

Cross-faction: on/off
Class restrictions: on/off
Level restrictions: on/off
Other meaningful Vanilla restrictions: configurable where practical

That would let people who love the convenience use it without forcing everyone else to accept the same philosophy.

I don't need everybody to agree with me.

I just want the game to let me choose which version of Vanilla I actually want to play.

The thing that bothers me most is value destruction

This is probably the biggest realization I've had.

I don't dislike overpowered classes merely because they are “unbalanced.”

I dislike them because they can destroy the value structure of the entire game.

Suppose a dungeon is designed around five players.

Five people enter.

They have to coordinate.

The tank matters.

The healer matters.

The DPS matter.

The drops are valuable because obtaining them requires assembling a group and successfully completing the content.

Now make the dungeon trivial for one enormously overpowered character.

Or allow multiboxing to effectively turn one player into an entire group.

Suddenly the economic and social structure changes.

One person can farm the dungeon repeatedly.

The drops become more common.

The auction house gets flooded.

The rewards become less meaningful.

The incentive to form groups decreases.

The dungeon stops being a social activity and becomes a farming location.

And then eventually people wonder why nobody wants to run dungeons anymore.

That's what I mean when I say that some “improvements” actually destroy gameplay.

The five-man requirement wasn't merely an inconvenience.

It was the gameplay.

I want scarcity to matter

I want things to be valuable because they are difficult to obtain.

I want a dungeon drop to be exciting because I might not see it again for a long time.

I want somebody's epic mount to tell me something about the investment they've made in their character.

I want professions to have an actual place in the economy.

I want a highly geared character to represent substantial effort.

I want the auction house to contain things that are expensive because they are genuinely difficult or time-consuming to acquire.

I want people to need each other.

I don't want every piece of content to eventually become a solo farm because someone discovered that a particular class, build, multibox setup or server mechanic makes it possible.

This is also why I don't really care about having the most efficient possible way of playing.

If everyone is exploiting the same broken system and making enormous amounts of gold, I don't particularly want to join them.

At that point the achievement itself has lost much of its appeal.

I'd rather play the dungeon the way it was intended and have the dungeon remain difficult enough that getting five people together actually means something.

This is why I keep coming back to the memory of Turtle's better period

The thing I miss isn't simply “Turtle WoW.”

It's a particular balance.

There was a point where the game had accumulated enough additional content to feel richer than original Vanilla, while still feeling fundamentally like Vanilla.

That is an incredibly difficult sweet spot to hit.

You could have additional quests, dungeons and other content without needing to redesign the entire underlying game.

The additions expanded the world.

They didn't necessarily replace it.

And that's what I think a lot of people misunderstand when they talk about Vanilla+.

More content isn't necessarily the problem.

The problem is changing the rules that make the original content valuable.

You can add another dungeon without destroying the old dungeons.

You can add quests without destroying the leveling experience.

You can add bigger bags without changing class balance.

But once you start removing faction boundaries, massively increasing player power, making classes capable of doing everything, trivializing group content, or otherwise eroding the dependencies that hold the MMO together, you're no longer simply adding to Vanilla.

You're modifying the ecosystem.

And the ecosystem is the game.

So what would my ideal server actually look like?

I'd probably call it Vanilla++ rather than Classic+.

The foundation would be essentially 1.12 Vanilla:

Vanilla classes and class identities
Vanilla factions
Vanilla PvE progression
Vanilla raids
Vanilla professions
Vanilla-style itemization
Vanilla-style leveling
Vanilla world structure
Meaningful group dependency
A functioning economy based on scarcity

Then add things that enhance that foundation:

Larger bags
Sensible quality-of-life improvements
Additional quests
Additional dungeons
Perhaps additional zones
New profession recipes
New reputation factions
Cosmetic additions
Carefully designed optional content
Fixes for genuinely obnoxious Vanilla limitations

But leave the important things alone.

Don't homogenize the classes.

Don't make every class capable of doing everything.

Don't trivialize five-man content.

Don't destroy faction identity.

Don't flood the economy with easily farmable rewards.

Don't turn raids into a completely different game.

Don't keep increasing player power simply because you need another progression system.

And don't confuse “more features” with “better game.”

I think restraint is the feature I'm actually looking for

That's probably the simplest way I can put all of this.

I'm not looking for the server with the longest feature list.

I'm looking for the developer who knows when not to add something.

There is an enormous temptation with Classic+ to look at every limitation in Vanilla and ask how to remove it.

But some limitations are the reason Vanilla works.

The difficulty of assembling a group creates community.

Faction separation creates identity.

Scarce items create value.

Class limitations create interdependence.

Difficult dungeons create achievement.

Slow progression makes investment meaningful.

The trick isn't to remove those things.

The trick is to distinguish them from the limitations that merely waste your time.

That's why something as seemingly ridiculous as a 36-slot bag can actually fit my idea of Vanilla better than many much more ambitious “Vanilla+” features.

It doesn't give me a new game.

It gives me more room to play the old one.

And that's ultimately what I'm looking for.

Not another MMO wearing Vanilla's clothes.

Not Vanilla with every inconvenience preserved for historical accuracy.

And not an endless pile of systems marketed as improvements.

Just Vanilla, with enough thoughtful additions and restraint that the game can remain itself while giving us a little more room to live in it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=toZ9Pc760yc

[Kairion]

I did read it, it is AI shlop, followed by a link to an AI shlop youtube video.

[Brokka]

You should probably use AI to summarize your bad ideas

[Defiant]

so how come the server seem to be fine until it hit 500 pop online? ddos doesn't work like that..

https://octowow.st/forum/viewtopic.php?p=12528#p12528

Just gonna leave this here. Dude is a troll.

[Niyu]

So you didn't read, like expected. Figures from your productive replies.

It is not ideas.