When you create a character, you begin at level 1. The Xpac is in addition to the game, it is not a new game that begins at 58.
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How do you know this?
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If weâre going off of educated assumptions, Iâd wager that the increase in subs will be at best, temporary (for the duration of a month or so) and the tourist type players, who will be the natural types that feel like they depend on a boost in order to play TBC Classic, will leave for greener pastures (the next âbig thingâ).
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The best basis we have to judge how popular any given system is are the subscription analytics for expansions from before they stopped showing them. Going off this somewhat flawed basis, you could argue the boost LOSES subscriptions because any expansion that has had boosts in has lost subscribers. Of course there would be many MANY other problems with those xpacs, but boosts could be seen as one of them. I would agree with the conclusion.
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It is not so much known as assumed. I tend to be an old-school gamer. I am not a fan of instant gratification. However, the newer iterations of games and younger generations of gamers tend to prefer more instant grantification.
What a lot of people tend to forget is that vanilla wow was the game that was for more casual gamers back in its day.
It was in direct competition with other MMOs such as Everquest, Dark age of Camelot, Lineage 2, Ultima Online, and the list goes onâŚ
In these games death set you back progress - via exp or gear⌠You literally would drop all of your equipment in some of these games. There are other, even more extreme examples where your entire character died (was deleted) and you started overâŚ
Wow was very casual by comparison, but it offered an environment that could satisfy even the hardcore gamers while still pandering to the more casual players⌠However, over the years it continued to hand your hand more and more. It continued the trend of becoming more and more casual.
At present, the Classic iterations being released today of WoW - and soon, TBC are sort of like a happy balance between the hardcore of old and hand-holdy games of present⌠That said, we got to where we are today by adding in quality of life and ease of access and instant gratification features like a boost.
In short, you cannot know⌠But a lot of people played through classic. Those who played through classic are ready to progress on into TBC.
The players who never liked classic but loved TBC are given the opportunity to skip directly into the content they loved.
Unless they roll a blood elf or dranae (#getrekt new races, i guess) lol
I would wager you are correct - in the #2 assumption. The subs are likely not to last as long due to the boost - but that comes with the instant gratification culture that grips the world today. I suppose blizzard is banking on the short-term as they often tend to due because they have to please the stock holders in the âhere and now.â
Is it not obvious that this is the business structure they have straddled themselves with now? They release content, there is a surge in active playerbase and a rapid falling off, so they are now utilizing classic to try to fill in the gap some during luls in retail.
It could prove dangerous as they adapt the same strategy to classic, attempting to juggle subscriptions through the luls in their content.
In short, I agree with much of what you say. However, Blizzard still wants to pull in the playerbase (and income) that comes along with the boosts.
That said, I strongly advocate that Blizzard offers âfreshâ tbc servers with no boosts and no cash shop conveniences for the playerbase that is willing to sacrifice their progress up to this point to begin again in TBC and play without these features.
I would personally pay through another pay wall to gain access to such servers, but there is no way they would include a paywall for that due to the criticism they would face for such an âobviousâ bid for money.
At least for the boost they are offering a service for money⌠and for the âclassic cloneâ in addition to the character moving to tbc progression (to play both) they can claim they are offering a service (despite the fact that there is a copy of the character stored for both servers regardless)
It is idiotic for blizzard to try and appeal to this audience at the expense of their current one because, to put it bluntly, the young generation, as a whole, arenât playing games like WoW. Pandering to these instant-gratification Andys in retail hasnât worked, and the game has been in constant decline since they started doing it.
And besides, blizzard see more than enough success by appealing to their old school player base. Just look at Classic. That didnât have the modern instant-gratification features and it did fantastically, doubling wowâs subs at launch and more. I feel like we already went through this argument about whether the old game is any good today BEFORE CLASSIC WAS ANNOUNCED like when nost shut down or when that guy asked J Allen Brack at the Warlords of Draenor Blizzcon Q & A and, I thought, we came to the decisive conclusion that, YES, it is good and people want it. Not a retail-classic hybrid. Just THE game.
Ok but now that you admit this most likely eventuality, we must now readress whether your original claim is actually in support of the boost. Does boosting subs with tourists that will bounce in a month actually benefit the game? I donât think so. 1. because if the boost makes blizz a lot of money, that rewards them for this kind of behaviour and incentivises them to do it more (as we have seen them do with retail over the years) 2. the more players in HFP at launch, the more laggy it is going to be, the longer the ques are going to be, the more overcrowded quest objectives are going to be and the more layers that are going to need to exist which will F up the economy like it did in classic and 3. There will be an excess of clueless players who donât understand the classic game and donât know how to play their class roaming around, getting into your dungeon groups and so fourth and also when these players join your guild, later on when they leave, they will leave gaping holes in your guildâs roster.
This would be better than nothing but I strongly feel that the boosts should be on the fresh realms, not on the existing ones because those of us that invested time into classic thinking we were getting the old game canât take back that time investment now. Also, as you say yourself, the boost is mostly for those who didnât enjoy / play classic who want to hop into TBC so it would make sense for them to do that on realms with no gold inflation and competing players in full t3.
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I get your point. I was fundamentally against the boost originally.
Unfortunately the reality is that that boost is coming⌠Getting blizzard to recant this decision at this point would likely be harder than it was getting them to finally support the idea of putting classic into the game to begin withâŚ
In addition, the forum outcry with boost supporters is equal if not greater than the people crying out for the boost to be removed.
As I said, I am an old-school player that prefers not to have things handed to them. I feel more invested in a character that I took the time to develop from the start.
However, it is a fact based on the forum responses I have seen on both sides that there is a lot of demand for the boost. There are posts of people claiming to quit due to the boost and posts of people saying they are only making a return due to the boost as well⌠Blizzardâs stance is incredibly clear - on this one thing in particular, at leastâŚ
I feel our only worthwhile recourse that is anything more than just a pipe dream is the request fresh servers that do not have boosts or other cash shop conveniences, in the same way that the RP servers were requested - and eventually crafted.
Showing there is enough demand for it, like there was for RP, may get us a new set of servers - fresh, without boosts, and without cash shopsâŚ
At that point, it comes down to the player to show blizzard which server is the better choice over time with the measurable statistics⌠Which has more longevity? Which holds the subs longer? Which tends to be more popular?
By all estimations it might be the servers with the boosts⌠But some would prefer the journey. Unfortunately we cannot have it both ways. Want to get the boost removed, really? Get on board with helping us get fresh - non-boosted servers, then join those to show blizzard your stance. IF those servers tend to be far more popular and the subs start dropping out of the boosted servers then Blizzard will be forced to understand.
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Blizzard needs to remember that if it fails to deliver a good version of tbc, we will just go back to pservers and keep our money.
Boost is bad
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Yes please show me the tbc server that doesnât have something like the boost lol. Hate to break it to you, but 1-58 just isnât widely accepted as tbc content and players just simply will not play the game if there isnât some sort of help to get out of the 1-58 content.
Imagine being ok with a game dying from not getting new players all for the sake of you telling people they should be forced to run through 1-58 content in a remake of an expansion lol. Once you hit 70, you wont even remember that there is a boost. Nor should you.
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You should start packing then. You and I both know that the TBC Pserver community is a fraction of the size the classic Pserver is. So have at it. The rest of us that like TBC will just keep playing despite losing the few of you that meander off to those small servers
A regular influx of new players is vital for the health of any mmo. For everyone that plans on playing TBC (especially if you plan to raid) itâs in your best interest to have new players.
Original TBC was around the height of wowâs popularity. New players were joining all the time.
We are in a very different situation today. With the classic servers splitting into tbc and vanilla, tbc could potentially lose players.
I support efforts to encourage new players to join tbc, including the 58 boost
Every single private server out there offered FAR more generous level boosting than Blizzard is. Typical private servers offer things like 8x experience until 70 (cuts total leveling time down to about 15-20 hours), unlimited level 58 chars (blizzard only offering one), no racial restrictions on boosts, etc.
Iâm not a fan of the boost at all but going to a pserver because of the Blizzard boost is nonsensical. All the pservers offer far more generous boosting.
Personally, I think itâs kind of selfish for people to want a company to change their entire marketing strategy, to fulfill the needs of those who disagree with their marketing strategy.
tbc classic is dead. tbc retail is my new friend
Some do, some dont.
Thatâs why thereâs choices
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Love ya, Gorrith. I believe we can have it both ways. Thank you so much for the highly appreciated input. All of your thoughts are valid.
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30 days, mount, two toys, and the boost. Didnât expect the toys eh?
Several things we did not expect.
Iâm not really opposed to any of them at face value - but it does put me on the defensiveâŚ
It is a âslippery slopeâ after all given blizzardâs proven history that is the retail version of the game.
Anyway, I do not want the boost removed. I am pro-boost. It will bring new people into the game and that is a good thing for the classic project as a whole.
But I do want a select server sub-set that is fresh without boosts or cash shop conveniences⌠And we are making these requests in a similar capacity to how the RP community requested their RP servers - which blizzard originally said they would not spin up⌠However, as we all know, they did after recognizing the demand for this server-type.
These RP request forums had less overall response than current requests for fresh servers and for boost removal.
At this point the only reason I could see them ignoring the requests being made is because these servers by simplistic design may stand to earn them less revenue streams above and beyond the subscription baseline model.
My debate would be the longevity of said servers may stand to earn them longer-lasting subscriptions, increasing the baseline revenue without the bloated temporary income streams that are generated by boosts and cash shops.
Their business model has long-since driven away from longevity of sustained income. They build their content around expected surges in subscriptions, and microtransactions, and then the expected luls in subscriptions as their content grows stale.
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I would say the difference is that RP is a permanent play style.
A fresh boost free server only temporarily solves whatever problems people are complaining about. Which is why Iâd much rather see seasonal servers with a transfer off option at the end of the season.
Everything in wow is temporary. Nothing is a permanent solution.
I see you didnât understand what I said. An RP is permanently an RP server.
Please tell me how boosts are going to bring new players into TBC, and why the HELL Iâd care about new players playing the game anyways. I highly doubt little timmy whoâs 14 years old and never played wow before would say âoh yea boosts are here, now Iâll play the game.â
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