- Author: Taladril
- Date: March 31, 2021
- Updated: March 31, 2021
- Expansion: WoW Classic
Very intriguing news has come out for the future of Classic Era servers and also current players as this change will roll out at the same time as the change and effective removal of spell batching. See the full bluepost below for all details.
Blizzard is adding an item that will be buyable by characters that allow them to store world buffs, allowing you to save their durations without having to resort to purposefully logging your character out. The method uses a bought item from Chromie which is treated as a consumable that will need to be purchased for multiple uses. There is a one hour cooldown everytime they are used so that you can’t simply turn buffs on just for bosses and off again for other content.
The way it works is you get your buffs in as time efficient of manners as you’re used to, then once you have all of the buffs you plan to get, you activate your “Chronoboon Displacer” at which point your buffs are removed from your character and are added to the item, turning into a “Supercharged Chronoboon Displacer.” This item allows you to see the buffs that are saved and their durations and at this point your buffs are saved and ready to be used whenever you want. You can feel free to quest, do dungeons, pvp or anything else without having to worry about the buffs, and once raid time comes and you’re ready to pull, you can use the Displacer and, voila! your buffs are on you ready to go.
It isn’t mentioned specifically but it seems like buffs will be saved to the item even if the character dies so this will mean the end of the purge griefing and PVP raid attacks to limit competition between guilds on PVP servers. People will have their buffs saved and only release them right before the first pull or even later like at the first boss pull instead. In general this interaction had to do much more with trolling and griefing rather than the romanticized PVP battles that is often portrayed on these servers so this is a boon for these players by and large.
This is an interesting change for how Blizzard is looking to protect the Classic Era servers. There was going to be immediate problems with the popularity and long term raiding viability with these servers. Many are going to move onto TBC and Classic Era starting and staying with phase 6 already out on release means that the content is already stale. Worse, world buffs for the most part are a limited resource. It takes a 60, nay a whole raid of 60s to get the Ony or Nef head. The whole raid to get you there and a fresh 60 who hasn’t yet gotten the head. That’s a lot to expect for long-term plans when the buff is a one and done kind of thing. The head and the heart are by far the biggest buff and they are limited by the 60s that run them.
I had thought that Blizzard might have taken the route they did with the Chinese servers. Over there they don’t even play around with them. The buff simply goes out hourly. There’s no pesky waiting for head drops or mind controls. Nope, just log in and get it, end of story. While it seems silly to have it be that easy I still would think it’s a smarter long-term plan for Classic Era where the goal seems to be raiding Vanilla content. If you want to level then why not just do it in TBC? It’s the same quests. If you want fresh then Classic Era is the opposite of that. At least Blizzard has done something to help Classic Era servers from becoming instant ghost lands. We will see if this is enough for the months following the launch of TBC Classic.
Hey everybody!
We know that there’s a lot of excitement for Burning Crusade Classic, but we haven’t forgotten about the Classic Era servers. One of the defining features of raiding in Classic has certainly been the prevalence of world buff stacking, and while there are some interesting social effects – coordinating turn-ins, leveling alts, world PvP at buff locations, there’s also an obvious negative element – once you’re buffed, you’re incentivized to log off and stop playing to preserve your buffs. If you want to log off to go make dinner or put your kids to bed, that’s completely fine and the timing works in your favor. But if you still want to repair your gear, shop for consumables, or run a dungeon with your friends, then it’s not great to be losing precious minutes on your buffs, or worse, risk dying and losing them entirely. We’ve been wanting to do something about that side-effect, without completely abandoning our philosophy for WoW Classic, so we’re going to try something new in Patch 1.13.7: The Chronoboon Displacer.
What is it?
The Chronoboon Displacer is an item you buy which takes a snapshot of your world buffs, such as Rallying Cry of Dragonslayer, Songflower, etc. and saves them for use at a later time. Of course we don’t want to change things too radically, so it comes with some significant restrictions: While you are under the effects of the Chronoboon Displacer, you can’t benefit from any of the world buffs that it’s holding for you. That keeps you from getting a second set of buffs, and then still feeling like you need to log off. Also, when you release the buffs from the Chronoboon Displacer, it puts the item on a 1 hour cooldown so that you can’t toggle your buffs on for bosses and off for the rest of the raid.
How does it work?
First, you collect all your world buffs the way you normally would – getting your summon to Dire Maul, a portal back to Stormwind or Orgrimmar for your Rallying Cry of the Dragonslayer, a quick trip to Yojamba Isle to turn in the Heart of Hakkar, or whatever subset of world buffs your raid expects or that you feel comfortable with. Then you activate your Chronoboon Displacer, which creates a Supercharged Cronoboon Displacer in your inventory and an aura which holds the captured state of your world buffs. You can mouse over that aura at any time to see which buffs are stored, and how much time is stored on them. You can then go about your business, secure in the knowledge that your world buffs are saved and ready for use when you need them most. When you’re ready to restore them, simply activate the Supercharged Chronoboon Displacer and it will break apart, releasing the stored auras back onto your character.
Where do I get one?
Well, given the complex temporal mechanics involved, you obviously need to make a deal with a Bronze Dragon, and you can find a friendly one named Chromie located in Andorhal in the Western Plaguelands. Of course she’ll likely want your help repairing the time stream first, but once you’ve helped her out with that, she’ll be happy to sell you as many Chronoboon Displacers as your heart desires.
Why now?
We launched Classic with an intent to keep the game data the same as it was originally, and we wanted to make sure we delivered on that promise, but now that we’ve been through all the content phases we planned before launch, we took a step back to consider what it really means to have the world buff system stay this way in Classic Era. A persistent world where everybody is traveling around for magical items and spells to maximize their power is fine, but one where they then stop playing to avoid wasting them seems wrong. Having an additional stop that lets you “bottle your buffs” seems like a thematically appropriate change to alleviate that problem.
We know this is a change, and any change to Classic is something we want to be careful with, but in this case, the fact that playing optimally literally requires you to stop playing was just too much for us to sit idly by. If you have any concerns about ways this might be abused, please post them here so we can address them. We hope you’ll all find this change as exciting as we do!
It will come out before Burning Crusade Classic is released.
I know some people would prefer we remove world buffs entirely, while others would prefer more radical changes, so it’s a challenge to find a good line. You should be able to try it soon on the PTR, and I hope it meets your expectations.
You use the Chronoboon Displacer, and it removes them from you, storing their remaining durations in a new aura, and prevents you from benefitting from any of the buff that are currently stored. The idea being, if it didn’t do that, you’d just get double buffs, and still have to log out to save the second set.
In addition the “Supercharged Chronoboon Displacer” is unique, so you can only be storing one set of buffs at a time, but the “Chronoboon Displacer” is not unique, so you can stock up on them ahead of time, so you aren’t required to make a trip out to Andorhal every week.
About the Author
In before the QQ.
This is the very first step in “new stuff” for classic. I think most who enjoyed classic (and want to continue with classic rather than TBC) wanted “classic+”. Here’s your start point.