7 ms·

Make new content à la Old School RuneScape?

falcolas 7y ago
They did. They made enough content that it’s currently at “Modern WoW”. All the changes were incremental. So, do they just re-release the same content again (and where do they stop)? Any attempt to release new “old school” content would be immediately compared to the original expansions (considered some of the best expansions of the game), and most likely not welcomed by the community.
- vanterdon 7y ago
  Eh, that's not what he's asking for. Runescape 3 has been on its own development path since 2007. In 2013 they released OSRS, which has its own development path that sticks to the old design philosophy rather than the one that they took in Runescape 3 following the evolution of combat update. Content in Modern WoW has an entirely different design philosophy than Vanilla. If they added to Classic, say 6 months to a year after Phase 6/Naxxramas has been released, that new content could stick to the Vanilla design philosophy and be totally warranted. They could even implement horizontal progression paths that don't invalidate Naxxramas as a source of powerful gear. If necessary, they could also leave up a museum server up for certain players who just want to relive 1.13 over and over again.
  - falcolas 7y ago
    None of the people who really drove the creation of WoW back in the day exist at Blizzard anymore. They don’t play WoW, they don’t even play computer games primarily (at least, that’s what they say). There’s nobody to really lead the charge to create “old school” content for WoW.
    - vanterdon 7y ago
      Plenty of them are still at Blizzard, though OSRS did a good enough job of having new staff and still sticking to the original game's design philosophy. It's really not an issue, it's easy to see the bounds of how the game could expand within the original design philosophy. For example, no LFG, keep the level cap, no transmog, no multi-server sharding, no removing RPG elements like hunter ammo, things of that sort.
- PeterStuer 7y ago
  I think the person you are responding though means adding more content without changing the gameplay mechanics that later patches and expansions brought. Also not every evolution means going down the paths previously taken. Old School Runescape has been developing continuously without turning into modern Runescape. AFAIK Blizzard has stated that if successfull (udefined criteria) they want to expand on the Classic release, but they have not decided wether they want that to be releasing ports of the next exansions (The Burning Crusade etc., 'vertical expansion'), or more content but still in the Classic game ('horizonal expansion'), or both etc.
  - falcolas 7y ago
    Any expansion path they take will divide an already niche community. There’s a set of people who have expressed a desire to go through the expansions again (up to a point, which is also a divisive point in the community), and there’s another set of poeple who don’t want any new releases, and a final group who wants new “old school” content. In short, a small niche set of gamers is split in three on where they want Class WoW to go, promising no real value to Blizzard (especially since they are not being independently monetized).
    - PeterStuer 7y ago
      Re-masters/releases are some of the cheapest games to produce. Therefore my money would be on them most certainly releasing the next expansions in the series remastered as well. Whether the customer-base for such a remake game series is primarily predatory on the current 'modern' game remains to be seen. Some retakes have been far more successful than their original bloodlines. Everyone always references OSRS, as that is also an MMO and therefore the most comparable, but think about the successes of the 'Age of Empires II' series still going strong where AoE3 was not longlived.

They did. They made enough content that it’s currently at “Modern WoW”. All the changes were incremental. So, do they just re-release the same content again (and where do they stop)? Any attempt to release new “old school” content would be immediately compared to the original expansions (considered some of the best expansions of the game), and most likely not welcomed by the community.

vanterdon 7y ago
Eh, that's not what he's asking for. Runescape 3 has been on its own development path since 2007. In 2013 they released OSRS, which has its own development path that sticks to the old design philosophy rather than the one that they took in Runescape 3 following the evolution of combat update. Content in Modern WoW has an entirely different design philosophy than Vanilla. If they added to Classic, say 6 months to a year after Phase 6/Naxxramas has been released, that new content could stick to the Vanilla design philosophy and be totally warranted. They could even implement horizontal progression paths that don't invalidate Naxxramas as a source of powerful gear. If necessary, they could also leave up a museum server up for certain players who just want to relive 1.13 over and over again.
- falcolas 7y ago
  None of the people who really drove the creation of WoW back in the day exist at Blizzard anymore. They don’t play WoW, they don’t even play computer games primarily (at least, that’s what they say). There’s nobody to really lead the charge to create “old school” content for WoW.
  - vanterdon 7y ago
    Plenty of them are still at Blizzard, though OSRS did a good enough job of having new staff and still sticking to the original game's design philosophy. It's really not an issue, it's easy to see the bounds of how the game could expand within the original design philosophy. For example, no LFG, keep the level cap, no transmog, no multi-server sharding, no removing RPG elements like hunter ammo, things of that sort.
PeterStuer 7y ago
I think the person you are responding though means adding more content without changing the gameplay mechanics that later patches and expansions brought. Also not every evolution means going down the paths previously taken. Old School Runescape has been developing continuously without turning into modern Runescape. AFAIK Blizzard has stated that if successfull (udefined criteria) they want to expand on the Classic release, but they have not decided wether they want that to be releasing ports of the next exansions (The Burning Crusade etc., 'vertical expansion'), or more content but still in the Classic game ('horizonal expansion'), or both etc.
- falcolas 7y ago
  Any expansion path they take will divide an already niche community. There’s a set of people who have expressed a desire to go through the expansions again (up to a point, which is also a divisive point in the community), and there’s another set of poeple who don’t want any new releases, and a final group who wants new “old school” content. In short, a small niche set of gamers is split in three on where they want Class WoW to go, promising no real value to Blizzard (especially since they are not being independently monetized).
  - PeterStuer 7y ago
    Re-masters/releases are some of the cheapest games to produce. Therefore my money would be on them most certainly releasing the next expansions in the series remastered as well. Whether the customer-base for such a remake game series is primarily predatory on the current 'modern' game remains to be seen. Some retakes have been far more successful than their original bloodlines. Everyone always references OSRS, as that is also an MMO and therefore the most comparable, but think about the successes of the 'Age of Empires II' series still going strong where AoE3 was not longlived.