This might sound a little weird, so just follow me for a second.
Let’s say you’re an Orc Warrior. You’re on retail having a grand ol’ time. But then WoD Classic launches and you’re like “oh snap – that’s basically MY expansion!!”.
But instead of the current process – where each “version” of WoW is entirely disconnected – you instead get a “version” of your character in every version of WoW itself.
Instead of being some one-off, throwaway “temp” character, it would now be part of your character’s legacy. Any quest you complete in earlier versions of the game? That’s now “remembered” across all future versions of that character. Same for reputations, all that kinda stuff!
I feel like that would just make the idea of “starting over” much more enticing, as your character is still being preserved in the process.
Way too late in the cycle to have crossover from classic to retail.
Bringing new life to old content is good and I wish there was a more permanent system to do so. But it’s gotta lean on warbands not tied to a single character.
Fair point; I do quite like the Warband system.
I don’t know I would say it’s too late to have crossover between Classic and Retail; it would throw some people for a loop, but particularly with the Anniversary servers still in Vanilla content, but having a super expedited release schedule, I think it would give ample time for players who felt they’d “missed out” on anything, a chance to get those things again.
But honestly, for me it’s more about the idea of something like “I effectively have the same Human Warrior (in both name and appearance) in both Classic Era and in Anniversary, but it just feels like I’m wasting time by splitting focus between the two”, just that pressure to make a “right” decision.
Or my original character, a Human Paladin, who I played exclusively during OG Vanilla; it would be kind of cool to be able to take him into Classic and complete all of the quests in the game, as I know I skipped quite a lot of quests originally, most (all?) of which are no longer available.
Or my Gnome Mage I created in SoD; I love that little guy! I know none of his gear, abilities, or even level would transfer across different versions of the game, but it would be super cool to feel like I was still able to play the same “character” in other versions of the game.
It might seem a bit superfluous, but I’m definitely someone who gets pretty attached to my characters, which is a big reason I don’t like having more than one character of any given class, and similarly, I tend to avoid playing characters in Classic that I already played heavily in Retail. It would be cool feeling like time spent across versions still “counts” as completing that stuff on your main. Like earning older titles in Classic, stuff like that maybe?
Again, just an idea!
when i read this i thought at first the perserved version would be that charcter but with all the stats, abilites and gear and items all kept in a state that was before the expansion changes.
like still having a lvl 120 Druid or a Druid with un nerfed corruption gear. max Twilight Dev or Over 100% Versatility before buff and debuffs.
10 million HP tanks while everyone got stat squished.
but that would be all kinds of broken for many different reasons.
i guess character copy between each “classic” version would be another way to kinda do it.
To be honest, it would be kind of cool for Blizzard to preserve the end-of-expansion state of your character in some capacity, so that as each “Classic” version or season launches, you could go back to them. Or maybe it would be more accurate to use the “pre-patch” state preceding each expansion, so you can still go into each version fresh.
As someone who played since launch, it can be a little deflating to feel like “man, I’ve already done all this” on every single expansion in Classic. I would be super happy if I felt like it was still being recognized in some capacity, even if it was as trivial as things like my quest-completions or gameplay-stats (time played, etc.) carried over.