Last vanilla patch before TBC

[Galadourn]

was, iirc, 2.0.1. We played that for a good 6 months before TBC hit the shelves.

assuming Blizzard agrees to make a vanilla Legacy server, I believe that tthey would use the latest standing patch, i.e. 2.0.1. That patch had the new talent trees with 41 pt talents and numerous other tweaks, changes and bugfixes.

How's everyone feeling about this? I mean, it is hard to believe that Blizzard would use any other patch other than the latest patch on the live server, because it was the most stable and had the latest bugfixes, not to mention the core changes in the game mechanics that carried forward to all the other expansions (like the bonus rating instead of a fixed % chance for gear bonuses, etc).

I don't really remember myself playing on the 2.0.1 patch, but it was there for 6 months and I was a fanatic WoW player at the time so there's no question of my having skipped it. Does anyone remember how balanced it was for lvl60 gameplay and what other issues it might have had?

[Drain]

Firstly, it was for only about a month. I don't know where you got "a good 6 months" from.

BC Patch: http://wowwiki.wikia.com/wiki/Patch_2.0.1
Release (US) 5 December 2006
BC Release: http://wowwiki.wikia.com/wiki/Patch_2.0.3
Release (US) 9 January 2007

Secondly, it IS BC, you just could not access most of the content for it. They upgraded the entire game to BC, which is what you could access without buying BC during its time period. But they did not release the new BC exclusive content yet because it hadn't officially released. In other words, if you played during the BC period, but didn't buy BC, this is what you got. You are technically in BC already. You just could not access hardly anything on it because you didn't buy the box yet, which they did not release until a month later.

This patch doesn't belong on Classic servers. But it would be nice to play older patches on newer clients, which is not the same thing. Rather than use the BC client to run Classic, which is what you're suggesting, why not just run Wotlk, an even better one, or better yet, any newer one beyond that. A newer client could run 1.12's content. The question is whether or not we should have access to the newer macro system, or the junk old one that Classic had. Before the BC patch, macros ate a dick. Post BC patch, they introduced a newer macro system that became standard in all the years to come.

Regardless of what client is used though, we should not have access to BC talents on a Classic server.

[Galadourn]

sry, was only 1 month you're right, it's the american date format that got me confused.

Thing is, how was the class balance in that patch @ level 60? Because we know that @lvl 70 things got skewed for certain playstyles/classes.

[Drain]

They helped, mainly because the talent trees in Classic were terrible. With BC, they were all changed, even if you don't use the new rows. But it doesn't matter, because they were never intended for Classic. They were only patched in to prepare for BC's release. No server was going to hold back for Classic, so there was no reason not to patch them all up. They did not care if you easymoded the game for 1 month because once BC opened; all that content is obsolete. Anything you could cheese with OP BC talent trees in Classic quickly became worthless next year. But for a server being dedicated to Classic, we should not have any Classic talent trees. We'd be totally OP for the content the way it was. The new BC content was designed for the trees.

Technically, leveling was also borked after BC launched, giving us better trees and new talents for 1-58, but they didn't care much about leveling, something they'd repeatedly screw over as the years went by, making it easier and faster with every expansion. They kept wanting you to level faster so you could get to their shiny new content as fast as possible. They didn't care if you didn't see the previous content. BC did not affect leveling that much though, since you didn't get many talent points anyway before 50. It mainly just slashed XP and made every tree viable. They actually butchered the leveling process far more in later years, with heirlooms and a full 1-60 revamp in Cata, fucking over every possible thing they could. With Cata, the game was trainwrecked totally beyond repair. They went out of their way to ruin every zone/quest/dungeon in the whole game, which goes above and beyond just improving the trees.

[Galadourn]

They helped, mainly because the talent trees in Classic were terrible. With BC, they were all changed, even if you don't use the new rows.

So this patch might be interesting if Blizzard could somehow remove or disable the end tier talents in the new talent trees and use the old PvP ranking system(?) It still has the latest bugfixes and the improved UI and, someone mentioned elsewhere, the new macro system that carried on in the other expansions.

I think the biggest gripe people had with this patch was the change in the PvP ranking system which gave free epic gear, often better than that found in raids, with a certain amount of time invested.

[Tinkertown]

No the patch is not interesting. It screwed up a ton of stuff. I prefered 1.11 but 1.12 is ok too. 2.0 is TBC and does not belong on a vanilla server.

[Galadourn]

the thing is, how likely is Blizzard to release a previous patch version of a client as vanilla?

then, there's a question being posed on the selection process; why release patch 1.12.1 and not 1.11 or any other version for that matter?

[Tinkertown]

1.12.1 (really 1.12.2 but that only had some fixes to the spanish I think) is the last vanilla patch.

2.0 is the prepatch for TBC and at that point TBC addons only work, spells no longer fit vanilla encounters (people 5 maning a Naxx 40 boss is a joke.) and everything is tuned for lvl70. Many core vanilla gameplay features were 'fixed' or destroyed depending on how you look at it and vanilla as we knew it was gone forever.

1.11 I only brought up because it was the patch that was active when Naxx was cleared and thus the last patch that saw high level progression. But it is a moot point. I fully expect 1.12 to be the basis for any legacy server project as it is the last vanilla patch.

2.0 changed everything. Just like prepatches tend to do. If you prefer the mechanics of 2.0 that is fine, but if that is the case then a TBC server is what you aught to be looking for because it is TBC abilities and mechanics. And in their initial most buggy state. 1.12 is the lasr iteration of vanilla and as such better tuned for what it aims to do than 2.0 the first iteration of TBC mechanics.

Lastly I'd like to say that unlike private servers Blizzard will likely, if they do legacy, change the actual client. So I'd expect 1.13 with Bnet support and all that stuff. Bugfixes can be implemented here if Blizzard finds it worthwhile, regardless if the bug was fixed in a 1.x, 2.x or even 5.x patch.

[Galadourn]

that's a good analysis, thx

[Ronix]

You don't want me to have water elemental @ 60 it made frost mages near godmode for a month, that and free high warlord gear for all.