TLDR at the bottom.
I’m starting to post on forums and comment in other places because I feel strongly about Classic. I simply enjoy the game - I love WoW, have played every expansion significantly all the way up to Shadowlands. And I think that will be the end of that. Dragonflight will be the first expansion where I will have never logged in.
During Dragonflight I’ve played both Vanilla and Wrath Classic. I play on the dead server cluster for Vanilla and honestly it’s been a blast. When I have an urge for a change of pace I swap over to Wrath and get my fill. I have a ton of alts across both games and would love to level them up, but I currently don’t have an active subscription.
Even with the enticing release of Plunderstorm I do not want to renew my sub. I would love to jump into Vanilla and level me some alts, but here’s my gripe. Why am I paying the same subscription cost across the board? The game’s ‘cost’ has essentially changed. I’m not completely certain about it, but my heart tells me, if I HAVE to pay a subscription, it should be cheaper. Five dollars seems reasonable, ten is asking for a lot, but fifteen is what I’d be paying for the game that receives updates, receives new content, etc. On top of that I still have to pay for in-game services such as faction changes, race changes, etc. when even then it’s proven to be free if I want to change from unpopulated to populated servers.
I understand servers will have an upkeep cost. But, somewhere the price of the tech to run the same specifications as the old servers that originally ran Vanilla should be cheaper to obtain, and maybe cheaper to run(?). To have in-game services cost money, with little to no support in the form of player customer service, while paying a modern day subscription seems unfair.
Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I’m using too much of my imagination or I simply don’t have the bigger picture.
Still, I’ll just say what I think. Classic should be free, or at the very least more cheaply available. The last patch that a Classic expansion sees should be a mainstay. We should still have Burning Crusade servers alongside Vanilla Classic, as well as Wrath. The Cataclysm is coming…again. If the same process of elimination happens to Wrath that happened to BC then I’ll be done with WoW. That being said, if Wrath Classic stays and I can join into Cataclysm, I’ll stick around.
Spitballing here with no conceptualization of how this would work technically or if it’s even possible, or as many will say ‘the best path forward’. WoW is already split into Classic, Hardcore, Season of Discovery, Wrath, Plunderstorm, and retail. I always thought Classic was going to be the game, like an image in time, always available for us to play. Not from the latest expansion able to journey back into, or a rerun through all the expansions. But the game as it was the last time we played it. The Classic game should be expansion-era servers (Maybe 2 for each type) always available. I like Vanilla talents and raids, I like BC gear and arena, I like my mage’s spells in Wrath and Wintergrasp, I like the old guidebooks, I like something from each expansion, I truly do. Even how the expansions interacts with previous expansion content (like soloing a 60 dungeon at 80). I want it in that capsule format like a retro game I can boot up.
I think Wrath was innovative with adding the collections tab (also the experience bonus, and level 20 mounts). I feel like Classic should have its own game in the launcher. Share account-wide mounts, pets, etc. (which ‘darken’ out unavailable to each respective expansion. Maybe that’s too much, but at least let us keep those things rather than erase the servers. I would still play if I had to farm something individually in each iteration of the game as long as I know it’s there for all-time.
One paid service that could support the entire Classic game being free is allowing us to copy characters on to different-era servers. Obviously it can’t ‘revert’ but in the same way we copied characters from Vanilla to BC, etc.
TLDR: Classic should work like owning the physical copy of each expansion with its last patch. I insert the disc, play the game with all my saved data just as I did the very last time I played it. It needs to be available. Free or cheaper just as those physical copies would be as well.