MAJOR changes coming to Wrath Classic <Sponsored by FUNPAY>

[Kenneth]

With only a little over a month to go until the most popular expansion of all time is re-released in Classic form Blizzard has dropped some nuclear changes on us and for the most part they are being very well received.


Faction Changes
This one came as a surprise. With how bad Blizzard has been at keeping server stability amongst faction balance throughout Classic and TBC Classic it always felt like a Race/Faction change option would only amp that up even more. With Alliance getting a major buff to PvP in Wrath in the form of "Every Man for Himself" it was thought if they added faction changes you might as well kiss the Horde population goodbye as PvE advantages are so minor in comparison. Nonetheless Blizzard has made it known that both Race and Faction changes will be available to allow players to play with their friends even if that comes at a cost of more server imbalance down the line. These will not be available at launch but rather a future patch. Most likely this is coming out in Phase 2 with Ulduar once there is a slight drop off from the launch numbers. To me this tells me that Blizzard want to milk Wrath for all it has before it's gone and they have to juggle the future of Classic in World of Warcraft and what they want to do.


2v2 Arena Achievements and Titles
Originally in Wrath achievements and titles were removed from the 2v2 arena bracket because it was impossible to balance and it was thought that 3v3 being the esport standard ladder was what should be rewarded. This still holds true in retail today. You cannot get Gladiator in 2v2 on retail or Rank 1 titles. The Classic Development team sees this as an issue and are keeping achievements and titles available for the 2v2 bracket going forward. This is a massive change to the PvP scene and something that even retail developers haven't done. Not all classes and specs thrive as much in 3s as they do 2s and even if 2s is imbalanced realistically so is 3s. Look at the top of the ladder and its RMP 90% of the time so letting people have fun in a bracket they thrive in and rewarding them in that bracket is definitely the play and I wish retail would open their eyes to it. Also finding 1 teammate is much easier than finding 2.


Raid Lockouts
With the introduction to 10 and 25 man raiding on top of normal and heroic options people have wondered if Blizzard would allow players to run all 4 combinations of lockouts a week. Meaning can you run 10 man Naxx Normal, 10 man Naxx Heroic, 25 Man Naxx Normal, 25 Man Naxx Heroic each week. This was how it was in Wrath back in the day but with the min-max culture of gamers today does this style hold up. Is capping the sweaty players off to one lockout per week or two types of lockouts per week a good thing? Blizzard says yes. In their most recent developer update they have confirmed you can do both 10 man and 25 man each week but you'll have to choose between normal and heroic for each as once you do you cannot do the other. To me this is a great change because even if Phase 1 would be dope to have 4 lockouts, heroics, professions, and all that stuff to do once Ulduar comes out you don't want to feel like you have to run multiple version of the new raid AND the old raids now. So in the long run this cap is probably for the best.


Experience from PvP is being added
Blizzard are re-introducing experience gain based on honor earned as well as the ability to turn off all experience gains similar to retail. Leveling through PvP was a great feature especially for players who casually leveled alts they found fun to PvP in low level battlegrounds in. What is especially great about this change though is, unlike retail, it won't kill twinking. They state if you turn off your experience (so you don't accidentally level as a twink) you will still be put into battlegrounds with people who have their experience turned on. This is fantastic. In retail they completely killed twinking by putting all people who turn their experience off into the same queue's and were unable to play against normal characters with experience on. So every game as a twink was twink vs twink. Which is fun for awhile but I'm sure if you were to ask players who like twinking half the fun is just going around 1 shotting the normal levelers without good gear. If you wanted fair and balance PvP as far as gear you'de just play arenas at max level. So to me this is another huge W for the Classic Dev team in the PvP sector where they've made great changes despite what retail developers did in the past and still won't fix today.

Raid System Adjustments
A hammer was dropped on us with this one. For starters Blizzard is making it so long cooldowns in raids will be reset after an encounter ends. So no more choosing which boss you should have to use Bloodlust on you will now have it available for each fight. If your cooldown has a base of 2 minutes or more it is likely going to be reset after you kill a boss so you will have it available for the next even if you get there in under 2 minutes which is very likely in Wrath. Some exceptions will be Reincarnation, Lay on Hands, and a few others staying on long cooldowns. This combination of Bloodlust and cooldowns being available each boss fight is going to be a game changer and just shook up the Wrath DPS tier trees. Classes like UH DK were thought to be far worse than Frost but having Gargoyle every fight now might change their overall raid output compared to Frost. All in all huge W's from Blizzard