So I personally don’t want to move on into BC I am happy with a permanent vanilla server set. but I see a lot of folks saying the content is finite and what will happen in 3 years when everyone has seen everything and made their alts and they have seen everything. well I think there are several options.
release BC remastered/classic BC and then allow people to transfer to the new BC servers (thus people wanting to stay in vanilla can) or people can re-roll on the new BC servers. Then classic WOTK etc… not my cup of tea but some folks would want this path.
release new content after Naxx. basically split the timeline and continue as if BC and beyond never existed. Use the existing lore/zones (uldum, Hyjal, emerald dream etc…) instead of moving onto outlands.
Keep the level cap at 60, 1.12 talents etc… just add new zones/dungeons/raids
No or SLIGHT iLvl creep, no more than 2-3 iLvls, up from Naxx level. I don’t want to see old content become totally obsolete. Non raiders can still head from EPL/Winterpring to the new zones and quest/5 man if they don’t want to raid and get slight gear advancement.
With new 5 man gear being MC/Ony/BWL ilevels. Raiders will still feel rewarded for the harder raids having 5-6 ilevel gear advantage over the new 5 man content without rampent ILvl inflation/power creep. MC-> naxx was 6 ilvls from 58-64 so adding new raids with 65-66 ilevel gear and new 5 mans with 58-60 ilevel gear seems like a good balance to me.
Just the possibility to reinvent the story after vanilla seems appealing to me.
We log into our account and wake up in our capitol city’s hospital to find out that all those adventures we experienced over the past 15 years were dreams and nightmares placed in our minds by the old gods… none of it was real… the new adventure begins.
That would require the OP to put forth a modicum of effort.
That also presumes that the OP (who is a retail player, has a whopping 2 whole posts, 3 whole days on the forums, a whopping 1 hour read time, a whopping 27 topics viewed, a whole 250 posts read and chose to create a thread about a “hot hutton topic” that has been discussed to death as his first thread, BTW) is not simply trolling.
Nope to a lot of this. Classic has to progress into something. People want to play classic and if it does not morph/advance/progress then it will eventually wither. Nost had 40,000 players and it was free. Let that number sink in. Classic is not free and people that are paying will want more eventually.
Agree it has to morph. If they add TBC and Wotlk servers, the WoW community will essentially be playing four MMOs, which I think is a terrible idea. Same thing will happen if we split off Classic+ servers.
Why would Blizz make an entirely new game, with new assets and time spent balancing classes and talents, when they could just copy/paste BC and WOTLK like they are with 1.12?
What they really should do is keep Classic servers around as/is, and then have servers that start at Classic and go all the way up to WoTLK/Cata/Pandaria, one phase at a time, each phase lasting several months.
The Classic WoW servers that go live in August should stay forever locked to Vanilla content. No new content. No creativity. Just pure, unadulterated, vanilla forever.
By all means, though, champion the concept of making alternative ruleset servers or additional expansion servers. But the August 2019 servers should never experience new content, or any content beyond authentic Vanilla.
Classic will not change. It cannot, for financial and legal reasons.
If you’re worried about splitting, then make Classic+ and let the Classic servers run down to 10 players left. Blizzard is going to keep them permanently Classic until every Private Server has been litigated into the ground, and that could take decades.
classic only reboots after 3 years (devs: nothing yet)
classic with separate tbc/separate wotlk, the end (devs: possibility)
classic with separate tbc/separate wotlk, reboots after 3 years of wotlk (devs: nothing yet)
classic with progression into tbc and wotlk, the end (devs: not likely)
classic with progression into tbc and wotlk, reboots after 3 years of wotlk (because #5 is not likely, same applies here)
classic+ with added horizontal development, such as new raids and dungeons added (karazhan crypts, emerald dream, medivh’s tower, dragon isles, etc), guild banks, alliance high elves, horde ogres, retail models, 4th specs, etc…with possible reboot after 3 years or progression into an alternate outlands (devs: ion - nope. other devs - maybe.)
classic only with separate classic+ (see above)
classic with progression thru all the expacs (devs: not likely)
classic with completely separate expacs (all of them) (devs: nothing yet)
variants of those all contain the possiblity / non possibility of existing expacs or alternate timeline expacs
options for classic+
go back before vanilla timeline, to well of eternity era
go back before vanilla timeline to orc invasion called the first war, where orcs came thru the portal and forced humans to retreat to lordaeron
the vanilla timeline with a couple retail friendly changes such as guild banks and retail models, playable alliance high elves, playable horde ogres, character transfers, 4th specs with forms, karazhan crypts, emerald dream, medivh’s tower, dragon isles
the vanilla timeline same as above but with progression into a modified tbc.
for example. not so sure about futuristic timeline as the work involved in changing everything up, would be huge
They only have to wait long enough for the people who wanted it to be pure to invest enough time that leaving the game would be worse than sticking with the changes. That’s what the did in retail.
No one is going to put down a 300+ hour investment because they added a babershop.
They have legal cases to win which may take a decade or even two. Long after the private servers have shut down due to legal costs, Classic has to stay pure to the IP so that abandonment doesn’t kick in and allow Private Servers to claim emulator again.
Literally has nothing to do with it. Abandonware isn’t a legal concept in the United States, Blizzard owns the IP and copyright to all of their products regardless of whether they are using the software commercially or not.
The private servers don’t get shut down due to cease and desist because it’s a PITA, and Vanilla is only one type of private server, there will still be many private servers running all of the popular xpacs.
Also, even if they could claim such a legal protection, one could argue that all of the expansions are still being used in retail, as they stack on top of one another and are not replaced.
What Eloraell said here. They have to maintain a “pure Classic” form of the game, or they run into future legal problems involving their IP rights, which they’re required by law to enforce if they want to keep their trademarks and other assorted IP rights.
If they do a “Classic+” Variant, and I very much think they will. It will be its own product separate from Classic itself. It might turn out to be “complimentary” in some ways, ie they allow transfers from Classic to Classic+, but that would be about as far as the overlap ever goes.
I honestly think Blizzard’s end-game for Classic is for it to have “only 10 players” after all is said and done. They’re likely hoping to have other product offerings available to keep everybody Classic lures in “in the system” before numbers start to drop off considerably.
At least, that’s the likely plan so long as the number of players it brings in justifies the effort.
the only thing i wouldn’t be outright raging at would be if they added some weapon skins as events or something. Maybe a featured dungeon or battleground to grind skins on. That’s it. After 3 years or so, something like a ladder reset or server wipe and start again. If we get bored we get bored. They can make a classic+ later if they want but for the next couple years, i want untouched pure classic.