I think a point that hasn't brought up yet is the relation of allowing certain people to alter their graphics, and, though this is not my point as I read it from someone else on reddit, I'd like to repeat it here and build on it.
The gist of it was that someone was saying that allowing others to have the updated character models hurt no one, but then someone who played a Tauren countered by saying that the models Tauren received looked like goofy Disney characters and that he wanted to retain the dignity of his representation knowing that the way he designed his character was the way others saw it as a noble and dignified being.
In some ways allowing alterations impinges on the dignity and finality of the choices many people made at level one when you are allowed a do-over later on. It may seem ridiculous, but when you change one thing it can have unintended consequences for things you'd like to believe you aren't affecting.
As mention already by some of you guys, Classic WoW has a clear distinction from what we have currently – certain things that are set in stone and unchangeable. When something is chosen according to the principle "once and for all", it gains a completely different weight (think Diablo II and the skill choices, remember how attentive we were). The thing is, it adds a whole different perspective to your approach towards the character. It gets a meaning, sense of significance, certain identity, even if it's flawed to some extent.
Even the idea that somebody's representation of themselves should be permanent is just contradictory to how humans work. For most people how you want to represent yourself changes over time. Why shouldn't they be allowed to change their character to go along with their natural changes? Have you never changed your style over time? Your interests? Tastes? Any one of those can have a cascading effect that can make even the smallest past choice one you no longer enjoy.
This is exactly the line of thinking that got us to the point of no return in terms of any credibility or accountability in-game, simply due to the fact that you can hide it. I understand fully your sociological approach to the game, comparing stuff happening behind the screen with stuff taking place outside of your window. Of course, we as humans can do and re-do, and re-re-do many things. However this is not a valid argument, if we are debating an opportunity for Classic WoW to bring back what is lost in void – the sense of strong, real community. Even in real life, if you wish, there is almost no-one who can transform his identity to the point of being completely unrecognizable. Yet, with all these paid services it becomes so easy, and it has a huge impact on the way people behave. Especially, if we're talking closed communities – and Classic WoW will be a closed community. Think about it. Being able to nullify any harm you have done to the community (think social abuse, ganking, ninja-looting etc.) or even the idea that you will have the possibility to do so whenever you'd like to brings absolutely nothing good to the table.
Razor I like what you are saying but could you change whose username you're quoting there? I didn't say that!
It actually links to a completely different post of mine too. I think the quote tag you need inside the brackets is this "quote=MilleXIV post_id=4915 time=1552940783 user_id=463"
I can't think of any reason why they shouldn't implement the appearance change service, provided they remove the name change portion of it.
It wasn't in Vanilla, it was added in WotLK. Good enough reason for most of this playerbase.
Race change I'm mostly okay with
Yeah, it's like - remember that time when they gave Humans a legitimately OP racial and every serious PvP-er faction transfered to Alliance and it stayed that way for years.
Or that time Horde had the best PvE racial in the game so over 80% of top guilds were playing Horde .
When you're a casual, these things don't really matter to you and I get you're just interested in cosmetic changes, and I get that - but whether you like it or not, the course of this game is going to be dictated mostly by these big players and big guilds.
So what's stopping most guilds from doing the same thing now?
Sometimes it does happen, and we've seen that often times the best/hardcore PvE guilds go Alliance because they have better PvE racials. Vanilla is not balanced in any way at all, however there is a sense of permanence which inhibits the min/maxers a lot of times.
If you're free to choose whatever you want to play at any point in the game, then it doesn't really matter anymore and you're more inclined to just swap to whatever race has the best racial since there's absolutely no longer any significance in the amount of time you put into leveling one particular race. You'd just have a "max level character" and the race would be a matter of "spending 25$".
I get that even harmless cosmetic choices sound good in theory, but players are like spoiled kids who want cookies from the cookie jar and the game should never cater towards them. The moment you give them access to the cookie jar, you have to find something else to motivate them with, you have to find better cookies to treat them with, and in two weeks time they'll probably hate or at best forget about the cookie jar entirely.
I guess the best way I can sum up the above points is:
#nochanges
Am personally against those features in Classic, even the cosmetic ones. I don't think they have any place in that kind of era, because you should be thinking through your decisions before you go for them, and then learn to accept it, knowing that everything cannot just be instantly changed with money.
Meant to address this before but forgot to. I don't agree with this in the slightest. If I dislike something and can't get a refund on it I call it a bad product and toss it out. Deciding to just tough it out and deal with it is classic sunk cost fallacy. Even with that being said, characters are bits of computer data that can be changed. In this case, provably so since Blizzard already has these options. There's no valid reason why one "can't get a refund" in this case.
Yeah but you literally CHOSE to roll that product. If you don’t like it anymore you should re roll, not be able to change it.
Why? Because it wasn’t in The original. The purpose of classic is to be as close of a representation to the original as possible regardless of the good/bad QoL changes. Get over it.
Edit: fixed quote
So here's my issue. Not a single one of you has explained how minor cosmetic changes (an appearance change without a name change) will suddenly affect your community and/or reputation. You keep saying it will, but I literally cannot even begin to fathom how changing your character's gender/skin tone/hairstyle will make people forget who you are. If that's enough to make you forget who somebody is, did you ever really care about the person behind the character, or just the character?
Being able to nullify any harm you have done to the community (think social abuse, ganking, ninja-looting etc.) or even the idea that you will have the possibility to do so whenever you'd like to brings absolutely nothing good to the table.
I really would appreciate it if you could tell me how a change in something as simple as hairstyle or color would make the community forget those things. Really, please do.
I get that even harmless cosmetic choices sound good in theory, but players are like spoiled kids who want cookies from the cookie jar and the game should never cater towards them. The moment you give them access to the cookie jar, you have to find something else to motivate them with, you have to find better cookies to treat them with, and in two weeks time they'll probably hate or at best forget about the cookie jar entirely.
This is exactly the line of thinking that got us to the point of no return in terms of any credibility or accountability in-game, simply due to the fact that you can hide it.
Just how slippery is that slope you're on? Just having something as simple as the ability to change your appearance will not cause everything to go as extreme as you guys are thinking without any actual proof that it was simple appearance changes that caused it. Change is game design are what caused the issues, not the ability to change how you look. I guess I just have more faith that people who will actively choose to play Classic know that there's a difference between cosmetic changes and game design changes.
The gist of it was that someone was saying that allowing others to have the updated character models hurt no one, but then someone who played a Tauren countered by saying that the models Tauren received looked like goofy Disney characters and that he wanted to retain the dignity of his representation knowing that the way he designed his character was the way others saw it as a noble and dignified being.
This actually supports my point pretty well really. If "how I want my character to be represented" is such a powerful thing that we should be forcing decisions onto others (no updated graphics) then it's also powerful enough that we should be letting people make choices for their own representation. Which includes letting them change when their idea of themselves changes.
It wasn't in Vanilla, it was added in WotLK. Good enough reason for most of this playerbase.
Why? Because it wasn’t in The original.
The issue I have with this line of thinking is that it gets applied to everything when it really shouldn't. Design decisions should remain unchanged. Technical limitations should be allowed to be changed. We've already changed some things due to technical limitations or changes (net code, Battle.net integration), and I don't see the lack of appearance change in vanilla as anything more than a technical limitation.
There are a lot of 'technical limitations' that were added in xpacs after vanilla - are you sure you want to open to door to allowing changes that were simply 'technical limitations' in vanilla? Flying mounts? LFG/LFR?
It's the old slippery slope adage. Sure you want cosmetic changes brought in from WotLK because it was just a technical limitation that has no direct impact, but where does it stop?
There are a lot of 'technical limitations' that were added in xpacs after vanilla - are you sure you want to open to door to allowing changes that were simply 'technical limitations' in vanilla? Flying mounts? LFG/LFR?
It's the old slippery slope adage. Sure you want cosmetic changes brought in from WotLK because it was just a technical limitation that has no direct impact, but where does it stop?
When they stop being technical limitations and start being game design decisions. Flying mounts and LFG/LFR are game design decisions. Simple cosmetic changes are not. They've already shown that game design decisions overrule tech limitations by adding the wait on mail and debuff limits back in. So far nobody has given a proper defense on why cosmetic changes affect game design other than saying they will. You've all made the claim, now back it up.
Being able to nullify any harm you have done to the community (think social abuse, ganking, ninja-looting etc.) or even the idea that you will have the possibility to do so whenever you'd like to brings absolutely nothing good to the table.
I really would appreciate it if you could tell me how a change in something as simple as hairstyle or color would make the community forget those things. Really, please do.
I respect your opinion and I'm in no position to argue who is right.
From my point of view - name change gives an opportunity to hide player's identity. This is harmful to healthy community. Appearance change itself does not have the same effect. Yet, it might open the pandora's box, which in turn could lead to decision of the developers to allow name change.
I personally would not like to encounter such course of events and therefore feel completely alright with unalterable decisions in terms of setting up your character.
Just how slippery is that slope you're on? Just having something as simple as the ability to change your appearance will not cause everything to go as extreme as you guys are thinking without any actual proof that it was simple appearance changes that caused it.
It is not a slippery slope, it's a fact of the game (and of life really) which has happened and will happen again if it is allowed to happen. I'll try to explain it in detail with a different analogy.
When I was very young, everyone played outside. The coolest thing you could have then was a hand-held device on which you could play games and everyone wanted that.
As I got older, they became more accessible and it wasn't the coolest thing to have them anymore. However, everyone wanted to have some kind of console to play games on.
As I got older, they became more accessible and it wasn't the coolest thing to have them anymore. However, everyone wanted some kind of computer to play PC games on.
As I got older, they became more accessible and it wasn't the coolest thing to have them anymore.
I got to live through the excitement and thrills of acquiring several gaming devices and I have a solid appreciation for each and everyone of them. How many kids these days give two fucks about a Tamagotchi or Super Mario when you give them smartphones at the age of 6 and by the time they're 7 they're hooked on gaming PCs?
World of Warcraft players are exactly like that. One of the main reasons the modern version of WoW sucks so much is exactly that - instead of making the players adapt to the game, they've adapted the game to the players and just gave everyone what they wanted, whatever was the "coolest" thing to have at that current time.
By giving people a choice to alter their appearance, you are removing all the significance of meaningful choices made prior which have contributed to the end result. If you can't understand the difference between my character having a mohawk because:
a) I created him that way, with a specific purpose, history, design in mind
b) I paid Blizzard 20$
Then I really don't know how to explain it any better. Most of us don't want Blizzard to babysit all our decisions because we're not children and it would definitely reduce our satisfaction as a result of directly affecting our uniqueness in the game.
The issue I have with this line of thinking is that it gets applied to everything when it really shouldn't.
*in your humble opinion, NOT in that of the devs and the vast majority of players who have stated, over and over again, that they wish to recreate the most authentic Vanilla experience possible.
Nitpicking what you think alters the gameplay is irrelevant to everyone else.
Nitpicking what you consider is relevant to this game (technical/non-technocal limitation) is absolutely irrelevant to everyone.
Trying to justify cosmetic change with the passage of time as an objective argument is just silly considering the events of Classic take place in the span on 1 year - and is also absolutely irrelevant.
So here's my issue. Not a single one of you has explained how minor cosmetic changes (an appearance change without a name change) will suddenly affect your community and/or reputation. You keep saying it will, but I literally cannot even begin to fathom how changing your character's gender/skin tone/hairstyle will make people forget who you are. If that's enough to make you forget who somebody is, did you ever really care about the person behind the character, or just the character?
Being able to nullify any harm you have done to the community (think social abuse, ganking, ninja-looting etc.) or even the idea that you will have the possibility to do so whenever you'd like to brings absolutely nothing good to the table.
I really would appreciate it if you could tell me how a change in something as simple as hairstyle or color would make the community forget those things. Really, please do.
I get that even harmless cosmetic choices sound good in theory, but players are like spoiled kids who want cookies from the cookie jar and the game should never cater towards them. The moment you give them access to the cookie jar, you have to find something else to motivate them with, you have to find better cookies to treat them with, and in two weeks time they'll probably hate or at best forget about the cookie jar entirely.
This is exactly the line of thinking that got us to the point of no return in terms of any credibility or accountability in-game, simply due to the fact that you can hide it.
Just how slippery is that slope you're on? Just having something as simple as the ability to change your appearance will not cause everything to go as extreme as you guys are thinking without any actual proof that it was simple appearance changes that caused it. Change is game design are what caused the issues, not the ability to change how you look. I guess I just have more faith that people who will actively choose to play Classic know that there's a difference between cosmetic changes and game design changes.
The gist of it was that someone was saying that allowing others to have the updated character models hurt no one, but then someone who played a Tauren countered by saying that the models Tauren received looked like goofy Disney characters and that he wanted to retain the dignity of his representation knowing that the way he designed his character was the way others saw it as a noble and dignified being.
This actually supports my point pretty well really. If "how I want my character to be represented" is such a powerful thing that we should be forcing decisions onto others (no updated graphics) then it's also powerful enough that we should be letting people make choices for their own representation. Which includes letting them change when their idea of themselves changes.
It wasn't in Vanilla, it was added in WotLK. Good enough reason for most of this playerbase.
Why? Because it wasn’t in The original.
The issue I have with this line of thinking is that it gets applied to everything when it really shouldn't. Design decisions should remain unchanged. Technical limitations should be allowed to be changed. We've already changed some things due to technical limitations or changes (net code, Battle.net integration), and I don't see the lack of appearance change in vanilla as anything more than a technical limitation.
My own point has always been that Vanilla, and now Classic, is a type of game that does not "bow down" to whatever change people want, cosmetic or not. You are supposed to adjust to the game, the game is not supposed to adjust itself to you.
You are put into the world, given the tools, and now you do your best to survive with what you have been given. Not stand there and say how you want this and this because "it does not affect anyone and therefore I should have it."
Classic will not adjust itself to you, you adjust to Classic.