After Naxxramas, I think three things should happen to Classic:
1] Burning Crusade Servers
Open new Burning Crusade servers and offer character transfers from the Classic servers.
This way people who want to move on to Burning Crusade can do so, while those who want to play Classic are not forced into the next expansion.
2] Release FRESH Classic servers
Nothing like that fresh feeling…New server, New character, New friends, and overall a New adventure.
Classic has just so much replay ability that you could just keep re-releasing this game over and over and over again.
You wanna try a Paladin this time? Or try the other faction, you can go right ahead.
Re-experience the Gates of Ahn’Qiraj opening, re-experience the Wpvp in phase 2, or complete a certain goal that you missed out on last time.
3] Merge the existing Classic servers
For players who want to continue farming out Naxxramas and just stay in Classic, they can have dedicated “Naxxramas” servers. i.e. Servers that are at the Naxxramas patch and are just left that way.
Obviously many people will move onto Burning Crusade or the Fresh servers, so the “Naxxramas” servers will have to be merged to maintain a healthy population.
The way Classic is now it will always be fresh and new. Why anyone would want to do the same long, tedious, painful leveling over and over is beyond me.
Says the 120. But there are and will be enough people that want this to satisfy the demand. Blizzard said they don’t care if 10million or 100 players play classic, it will be there. In 2 years it’ll be time for BC
Nothing about classic is fresh and new. Fresh servers at least allow for a fresh start for many.
There are people who don’t care for Classic but care for TBC. Additionally there are people who don’t care for either but will love Wrath. As you lose people, you gain more who are invested in that being what they want to relive.
I think as time goes on people will realize the most likely thing to happen is Blizzard realize Classic for a lot of people, namely private server players who whether or not you want to believe it do account for a large chunk of players are endlessly satisfied by cycling fresh servers and they treat it no different than a Diablo 2 ladder season.
End of the day, Classic alone will print them money.
Also I should mention, we can stand to lose a few people, shedding the people who are strictly “CLASSIC ONLY!” will help alleviate the problem with overpopulated servers.
You’re posting on the Classic forum, use at least one of your classic avatars or nothing you say has any merit to classic.
And yes, there is. A million or more people are playing classic and many more would come back for each.
Is it really such an alien idea to you that people like to start fresh and race to be the first, or just like to start anew with a new faction, toon, etc? I’m sorry you find leveling to be painful or tedious, but to many, including myself, it’s the best part of the game. I used to wait and hope that when servers came back up from maintenance there would be a “New Server” tag next to one so I could hop on it.
Start the server as classic with a timetable, then you have a few that go on to the other expansions about a certain time, and a few that go on by server vote.
Then you have some servers that do special things.
This is the first time out of hundreds (if not thousands) of classic threads that I’ve seen someone asking for a classic server merge, completely fresh servers, new BC servers, and Naxxramas servers.
So, personal source. Sorry, I don’t have any research data or articles to provide you, source master.