I wouldn’t be surprised if they acknowledge that Wrath is the end of the road for many people and create a new loop of vanilla–tbc—wrath for people who aren’t interested in cata and also a cata progression server moving on from wrath. Seems like the community is split on this one. I think cata will be way more interesting than wotlk tbh.
1 Like
If you want to figure out their plans, follow the $$$. That’s all that matters. Forget about ‘what the players want’. It’s meaningless. The only thing Blizz cares about is the players’ credit card info.
And it’s not even a business strategy of ‘most profitable’. It’s about quick cash for as little effort as possible. They clearly care nothing about the long-term health of the game and sustained financial gain. Starting with TBCC it just became about milking the players. Sell a Deluxe Edition, sell a clone. And then let the interns fiddle with it until they can do it all over again. So basically they build up hype for the next expansion, cash in, and move on.
My expectation therefore is that Cata Classic will come out. They’ll put in the absolutely bare amount of effort and resources into it (as they’ve done with Wrath). They’ll sell a boatload of Deluxe Editions, make tens of millions of dollars just from that by releasing content that was already developed over a decade ago. Then maintenance mode until MoP, where they do it all over again.
I could see them possibly making one or two permanent Wrath Era servers. The only reason being that they could once again force players to pay to clone characters over to such a server. Again, easy money.
8 Likes
I think I would agree with this. If they revamped it somehow or made those things that were terrible about cata go away or fixed, I’d be willing to give it a try.
That does definitely seem like one of the plausible outcomes. I’m quite interested to see how the conversation unfolds as we move into the mid to late phases of Wrath.
What players want = what players will pay for = what is profitable.
Wouldn’t disagree that their content rereleases will take a seat on the back burner to just about anything else the WoW team is doing, seeing the situation with Dragonflight at the moment.
However, developing Classic is a pretty resource-heavy project. Probably far less in later expansions than Vanilla, but I think they will actually have to completely retrofit or otherwise rewrite the code of Cataclysm and Mists of Pandaria to get it to work since we’re running on the Legion client. I’m guessing it’ll only be if/when Legion rolled around that they’d be able to simply start copy + pasting.
Vanilla was probably the most work to get running because they had to build a Classic client to begin with, and they also apparently had trouble recovering a complete copy of the game. Certainly not a problem they had with other versions of the game.
i’ve always said they should leave at least 2-3 maybe 4 servers at max in each region for those players who do not want to leave said era of wow or xpac of wow. and if they do allow them a paid option to copy their character from one of those servers over to living will of “classic” servers. but to out right close them down when the new xpac opens up its counter productive. especially with wrath probably having one of the biggest install bases for classic servers. would be foolish to say no more wrath servers now that cata is out.
Yes i know, they did that for TBC but private servers flourish very well with wrath servers. leave them up for those that just want to play into oblivion wrath content. you may find that boring but some will enjoy it.
Absolutely, it seems like a bad idea to have closed the book on TBC. It’s inconsistent with the way they handled Vanilla and it’s also just opening themselves up to repeat history where players have no way of playing TBC so they’ll just play private servers instead. I think each era of the game should have at least one dedicated server per region no matter how unpopular it might be. It would be so much better to have the option than to have TBC disappear entirely while we have a handful of Wrath servers that are literal ghost towns but still cost Blizzard money to run.
I believe they are holding off on wrath rdf, to put in cata. In hopes of getting those people back. It has been about gatekeeping and will become about marketing. LFR i bet wouldn’t be in cata, until the following expansion.
Either way, not even rdf can get me back for cata. lol
I wouldn’t mind that. That’s probably the best approach.
This way, Wrath era will offer same longevity as do private servers, but also still allow a decent chunk of players to move on to Cata, MoP, WOD etc.
I’d imagine a lot of players will drop off. From both. Not everyone who dislikes Cata will continue playing stagnant Wrath.
I’m hoping for 2-3 full servers for both versions of the game. Everyone wins. Throw in race/faction change for $$$ and keep milking it.
I will say this, i do believe that people will still go to those other private servers with how frustrated they are with Blizzard so no matter how they approach this it is unfortunately a lose lose situation. again i do not hate small changes to the classic iterations of the base game and xpacs. like most when they start making HUGE changes like they are intending with wrath with heroic + it tends to lead to divisiveness in the community no matter how good it sounds. regardless of how you feel about each xpac, those xpac’s should remain a viable option to play. I really don’t think we need to relive anything past wrath, but i do know there are people who want mist. and some even want legion. I don’t need or want either. they’re not a huge draw to me. but that is me.
2 Likes
Yeah, I’m a little torn myself, but I would love to have the three go on a repeating loop. Personally, I’m a big fan of the formula they struck with Diablo 3 where there are “seasons”. Basically you completely restart the game from level 1 every season and then you can “race” other people for progression and push the leaderboard. And you don’t even have to be a very good or competitive player to do it. It’s really nice to get a fresh start every now and again and to redo an experience you already know you’ll enjoy.
I’ve advocated for “seasons” in Classic in the past. I think it would be a fantastic option for people who want to play old eras but don’t necessarily want to play on a completely stangant realm with fixed content.
going to say this. but whom ever is asking them to right the wrongs of wod is just beyond me. there were too many things that went wrong with that xpac. and the thing is visually the ground world is gorgeous beyond belief. but WoD is too flawed to fix. the changes needed to repair that damaged xpac are great. i think wod being buried and left to the annals of history. i do see some fan fair for mist. but again i do not need to relive this much like i don’t need to relive legion.
Yeah… I have no problem with Classic going all the way to Dragonflight myself. I won’t play anything past Mists of Pandaria again, but I don’t mind if it exists. That being said, there’s a weird conundrum where they would have to basically redesign the game completely if they went as far as WoD. We’ve already made it to the historical point in time where Activision took over and started making changes, and so far it looks like the WoW team is going to “redo” WoW without Activision’s historical influence. But that will become harder and harder, and even impossible as time goes on.
If they ever did WoD Classic, they would either need to release a game with Garrisons in all their putrid glory, or they’d basically have to develop a whole new game to replace it. IF they do continue to try and deliver a version of the game without Activision’s garbage in it, I may just be down to relive all of WoW just to see how much better it is.
For what it’s worth, there were plenty of decent concepts along the path to retail. It’s just that everything was hampered by Activision’s influence as they twisted to game to be something it was never meant to be.
thing is i liked the Garrison. i know it was never intended to be “player housing” but thats how i treated it. and i don’t think we get WoD with out garrison. i just don’t see us getting a redesigned WoD and people need to get that out of their minds that they will get the raid where we go to Auchindoun as a raid. its not happening. that was straight scrapped. would be nice if they added it. tannin forest being a legit thing outside of what was. i remember they had a lot of grand ideas for the xpac. and a lot of cut content. again i just think people are going to expect one thing then be delivered WoD all over again. if WoD lead to a quicker legion whatever but i just don’t think that’s a positive experience all together. we don’t need to relive this xpacs. I loved Legion. But i don’t want to play it again. that game was far too time consuming especially if you wanted to play multiple toons.
It’s well known that players hype themselves up too much. And then left disappointed.
I don’t think Shadowlands was all that bad. It had flaws that got patched up in 9.0.5 and 9.1.5. These include Anima xfers, covenant restrictions, renown catch up, opening up ash farm, increasing lego’s drops etc.
I nerded the heck out of Shadowlands. Got all my toons with all roles(tank+dps+healer) to in between 20-26 in keys. I never got CE, but my Mythic prog was consistent 8/10 9/11.
Hype for SL was insane though. So a lot of people were left “hurt”. And if SL classic comes, “classic” format can fix some of those issues right off the bat. That’s what can make Classic actually a fantastic project.
thats fine to enjoy the chase for that. but you cannot say as a whole the xpac was good. it was dog crap tier level. the fact you have them bastardizing one of the best written lore characters to redeem another one that whole heartedly deserved the fate worse than what they did to arthas is inexcusable. yes i’m talking about Sylvannas. she deserved to die. i don’t care what they did in the xpac. she deserved to die. next the jailer was a complete pile cow crap. and the way it looked from the concept art. the primus was supposed to be the villain but they 11th houred that crap and tried to do a curve ball. further more they RUINED the helm of domination and frostmourne lore. complete garbage. oh and lets not forget how painful the maw was up until you could mount in that god forsaken zone. i’m fine not flying there but not being able to mount was a complete misstep on their part. oh and the jailer having some 20 odd lines in the entire xpac. and spoiler alert. he turns into a lifeless doll at the end. oh the crown of wills. the msot generic reused skin. literally the xpac was a giant meme. and i say this starting out enjoying castle as its first raid. that was good stuff. but everything after that. dog crap. oh introducing bonus rolls back in mist then to take them out entirely i believe in SL for the great vault and only getting to select one of 9 total items? doesn’t feel good at all. especially combining that with the PVE and PVP gear. not sure there is a difference anymore. but still.
The blue print for blizzard is the PS scene. Vanilla, tbc, wrath and mist…not necessarily in order of popularity. All they have to do is wake up.
1 Like
Raids were great? What raids?
Firelands was good but it was seven bosses in the middle of the expansion. The first tier was average and Dragon soul was garbage.
Why didn’t you like Dragon Soul? Aside from the extremely disappointing ending to Deathwing in the last 2 encounters.
Well boss wise(and ignoring deathwing) the only boss that was actually interesting was Hagara the others were just very meh.
Setting wise blizzard didn’t even bother to make a new zone, they put more work into ToC than they did into the end raid of Cata…
And yes the last two fights just being add fights as also a huge let down.
I really loved Hagara, especially as a Shaman main. Though for me, I think I enjoyed every single fight other than the Deathwing encounters. I guess Ultraxion was fairly boring by most standards.
I can see what you mean about the setting too. It was definitely an absolute far cry from the likes of Karazhan, Sunwell, Ulduar, Firelands, etc.