I predict after the successful launch of Classic is compared to the disappointing feedback of 8.2, that WoW Expansion 9.0 will revert things back to a more Classic-type play style.
i.e. the return of talent trees, classes having a uniqueness again, some change to make community a strong point in the game.
They will do this because it might improve the acceptance of the next patch, AND it will be a marketing strategy to try to pull Classic fans back into the retail version. 9.0 will be designed for both player bases in mind.
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I heard 8.2 was pretty good. Alot of people like it. Its still not enough to save BfA, but its better than what they got in BfA until 8.2
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9.0 is already in development. Not sure how far they’re going to adjust it. Expect a Blizzcon announce for 9.0 with a release around 2020 “summer”.
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Yeah. By the time classic has come out and enough time has passed for Blizzard to measure it’s success, 9.0 will already be way too close for them to really make any changes based on classic. If Classic does influence the current version of the game, it won’t be until much later.
I would love talent trees back and
Do something lore-wise to rip away my “champion” status. Make us all adventurers again and let us work together helping defeat our foes.
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I’m not convinced Blizzard of 2019 can learn that fast. 9.0 is probably already in the works, and has been for some time, given the length of production cycles. So the earliest I would expect to see real changes from the BFA stuff would be 10.0, but we could see some positive signs in 9.0.
Or they’ll try and do another BFA, and the retail game will die altogether.
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Then 10.0 becomes TBC Classic 
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You’re going to be disappointed unless they revamp the leveling experience.
Hard pass on Vanilla’s boring slog of an end game.
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9.0 is already in progress i’d imagine. I imagine whichever does better Classic or Retail will have an impact on 10.0.
They simply will not and likely can not unwind the mess they tied the game up as in any near future release. As some have speculated and I have to concur (and would be happy if I were wrong) it will likely take several expansions to unwind it, if they even tried to.
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They could have done that by making Naz’jatar far more powerful, but chose not to. Make every Naga kill worth 1 rep, but make it far harder to kill them without a group.
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Expansion are worked on rather quickly. Most of the time another team is already working on the next expansion before the current one is even out. Bfa was in development before legion launched.
A lot of people are saying there will a good amount of class tweaking. I don’t know where they get their information, but when I randomly play retail and on the GD forums people are certainly talking about it. Hopefully it’s true.
With or without the benefit of showing that Classic is a success? They’ve “tweaked” the classes in almost every expansion and the direction has no been towards variety and distinctiveness.
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Oh, I don’t know. I am hoping for, but I doubt classic will have any impact on retail.
It doesn’t help that alot of people who are selective about playing wow, recognise the binary expansion cycle.
There is a gud spansion, then a yucky poo poo one.
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I doubt any of that will happen, particularly when the Classic population crashes after the first month or so.
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Crash? No, divulge itself of retail tourists? Definetly.
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9.0 will likely have some Classic-influenced design themes, but it will not be a full revamp of the game.
It will be more like Nazjatar, where the quests don’t pop up on the map. They also don’t tell you where to go in quest text, so the result is more frustrating than anything else. Maybe if the zone wasn’t so densely packed with mobs it would be less frustrating to wander around looking. But the end result is that they took inspiration from Classic without understanding how it would interact with the existing game or putting the support systems in place to make it good, and that’s more of what I’d expect to see in 9.0 than a whole-cloth rewriting of game mechanics.
Pretty much the only way I would ever again play modern WoW is if they reverted back to original talent trees, less of a jump of stats between expansion content, and a return to the need to monitor threat/aggro as DPS.
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