The war drums in Burning Crusade Classic force players to become leatherworkers. Blizzard is aware of the problem – but makes it worse.
At BlizzConline, Blizzard stated that they want to make some changes to “The Burning Crusade” before the first expansion becomes available for WoW Classic. After all, players have become much more efficient, and there were also some mechanics in BC that simply weren’t good or sensible. Therefore, Blizzard wants to make changes to the war drums – but so far, they don’t look very good.
What are the war drums? In Burning Crusade, the war drums are items that can only be used by leatherworkers. When activated, they empower all nearby allies and grant them different effects – such as haste, attack power, spell power, or healing and movement speed.
Essentially, the drums count as an additional “Battle Rush,” allowing the whole group to deal much more damage and thus complete fights much faster.
What is the concern? The drums in Burning Crusade are way too strong. So strong, in fact, that it becomes almost mandatory for guilds to have nearly every single raid member become a leatherworker. Because when all players are leatherworkers, the war drums can be used “in succession” and ensure that the buff is kept active almost permanently. A single player has too long of a cooldown on the drums, but if all players are leatherworkers, the drums can be used continuously, thus permanently maximizing the performance of the characters.
All other professions become unattractive. Those who are not leatherworkers with drums may find it hard to find a decent guild.
What has Blizzard changed? Blizzard is approaching this issue in a rather unusual way. The original drums will be weakened. They still retain their strengthening effects but will only have a range of 8 meters. This means that players need to gather and “stack” each time they want to benefit from the drums. In some fights, this is simply not possible, which represents a direct nerf to the drums.
However, Blizzard has introduced a second version of the drums. These are as powerful as the original drums, meaning they have a 40-meter range but are a bit more expensive to craft.
These new drums, however, are only available in Zul’Aman, which is a later phase of Burning Crusade Classic.
Blizzard exacerbates the problem: Player criticism is quite loud. When Blizzard announced at BlizzConline that they were going to change the drums, players had hoped for something different. They wanted leatherworking not to be seen as the only viable profession.
However, that is not the case. With the current plans, the drums at the end of Burning Crusade Classic are just as strong as they were back then. Just with the slight difference that players must farm the recipes first and spend more resources per drum.
The effort for players has thus increased.
Players are angry, want changes: The disappointment of players over this change is significant. Most had hoped for more and wished that the drums were adjusted differently. Looking at the WoW Classic subreddit, many comments like this can be found:
- “This change alone has killed my enthusiasm for BC.”
- “They should just remove the drums. The simplest solution requires zero effort.”
- “Name one thing that is ‘more Blizzard’ than making a change to a toxic system that just makes that thing even more toxic.”
How does Retail solve this? The drums also exist in modified form in WoW: Shadowlands (“Retail”). There, like all Battle Rush effects, they fall under a special rule. Those affected by drums receive a debuff for 10 minutes. During this time, one cannot benefit again from such strengthening effects.
Whether this solution would be more appropriate for Burning Crusade Classic is controversial.
However, Burning Crusade Classic is still in early beta, and developers can still make many changes. The drums will certainly remain a hot topic.
What solution would you propose for the problem? Or do you see no problem that needs to be solved?
