Honest question, as I’m curious and will have an open mind. But would TBC Era realms be a good idea? While I understand the sentiment, wouldn’t this ultimately fragment the player base even more than it already is?
As it stands now we have:
1. Classic Era 2. Anniversary Realms 3. Classic Hardcore 4. Season of Discovery (While they confirmed the current phase is the final one, it isn’t going away from what I can tell) 5. Cataclysm Classic (Soon to be MoP Classic) 6. Retail WoW Potentially: 7. Classic+ (not at all confirmed or anything, but pure speculation)
Those are 6, potentially 7, distinct versions of the game to play, so I understand having these all be separate. I count Anniversary being separate from Classic Era as it is progressing into TBC. I’ve seen a lot of people express their wishes for TBC Era and even WotLK Era realms. If we did both of those it’d put us at 8, potentially 9, different versions.
Do we want to split up the player base that much? Is there enough demand for each of those versions to keep them feeling lively? That would be my biggest worry, but I want to see other people’s opinions on the matter.
I can understand having just one or two servers for era, but having so many different servers for so many different versions of the game just splits up the player base so much. Who wants to play an MMO where there’s barely anyone around?
I only play era. As a grown adult who isn’t a narcissist, I hope at minimum the TBC, Wrath, and Classic + people get their own servers. I realize that people who dont like my preferred version of the game won’t play it just because I demand their version be deleted or never created to begin with.
Plenty of us on Era disagree with your sentiment. If Blizzard is going to delete 11,000 active raiders and the other 10k+ casual players or retired hardcore players; they better implement a clone/xfer service to another Vanilla realm.
And when anniversary phases to TBC, you’re going to come flooding back into Era because it will remain to be the only place to play vanilla officially. That’s always been the point of era; it’ll always be there.
If you played anniversary then YOU are the one who fled to go play a fleeting, temporary mode that is soon phasing out.
Era is fine as it is, and will be fine in the future. With or without the return of the seasonal/hype crowd.
Rephrase this as, “Would more people play if there were fewer choices?”
We probably guess that Classic brought people back who wouldn’t play Retail, so it seems like one answer would be, “No.”
Is there a sweet-spot of higher overall population with some different numbers of options?
We don’t know. There’s a whole lot of probability and statistical modeling we could do to come up with various scenarios and estimates, but even with very accurate data, that we don’t have access to, we wouldn’t really know and we will never be able to prove it out either way.
Yes. Some of us don’t want to play in retail. Some of us don’t want to play in bc era or vanilla era.
I want permanent wrath era. And every era past wrath is what started, splitting up the community to begin with. Like yes, I want to play in versions of the game with zero ammo bags and pouches, and like, deleted class skills and all that good jargon. No stat sticks. And a completely gutted overworld. Not having to level or see anyone anymore. I love it soooo much. /sarcasm.
Seriously. Why blizzard made some of the stupid changes in cataclysm, and the stupid changes they continue to make in retail to this day. Boggles my brain. It’s why people want to go back lol. But I sure as heck want to go back to the first 3 clients of wow than any of the one’s that came after.
Like I don’t get why they don’t just differentiate it all now. Because, cataclysm and pandaria classic are nostalgic trips at best. They were fun, but I remember vanilla through wrath being more fun than anything. So fun logging into pandaria for the first time back in 2012, and I couldn’t equip 2 1 h swords and a bow on my hunter anymore. Dumbest thing ever.
I would gladly take a permanent wrath era realm, minus the dungeon finder and heirloom gear. And of course being able to play original 40 man naxx to. Pretty stupid in my op, and the whole revamp idea was thrown around in later expansions. Who honestly enjoys gutted content? I don’t enjoy when stuff gets taken away. It isn’t hard to satisfy everyone in just a couple splits. All most of us oldschool wow players remember is how everything cataclysm going forwards made was some dumb stupid changes that made us want the past wow back. Good lord.
The presumption you have is that, in the absence of the option they want, people will instead choose to play the option you want. This is fundamentally flawed. They might for a little while but ultimately, if the version of WoW folks want isn’t on offer they will just move on. If there was no Era server I wouldn’t be playing Cataclysm right now… I just wouldn’t be playing.
At best, this is an easily solvable UI problem. Blizzard is more than welcome to hire me on as a dev. I’m capable of solving this and will happily do so
Those people who wanted permanent classic realms, were already gone during the era of cata and pandaria to begin with. And mainly because of the stupid changes lol.
Cata going forward is a nostalgia rush. Funny how hated both cata and pandaria were when they came out back in the day lol. And the people who, disliked those expansions, and pretty much every expansion afterwards, just wanted permanent versions of the first 3 eras. I just want the permanent wrath classic era realm option.
Amazing how resilient everyone is to change nowadays. Regardless of how stupid the changes might be lol. Good lord.
It would cost blizzard basically nothing to maintain ERA servers for TBC and Wrath. Just follow the p server flow. Release a fresh server for each expansion every year, at the end it gets funneled into the ERA server. Rinse / repeat. WoW expacs on repeat forever whenever ppl wanna play them.
This issue has been solved by p servers forever and they have shown to have consistent populations for ages. There’s a TBC one right now with consistently 10k ppl online.
And 10 -20 k people whatever, would be perfect for me for a permanent wrath era realm to play lol. So get the heck on it blizz. We been asking for permanent bc and wrath realms for 2 years now. And sorry, I will never play or endorse private realms. They just don’t have the quality.
And like cha ching, because I would gladly pay extra cash. Sub fee. And cash to clone my current cata classic era toons to a bloody permanent wrath era realm blizz. But if you don’t want my extra dough, I guess keep doing what you are doing lol.
Player choice.
Also a good number of this player base is playing more than one version. Boredom, content droughts, etc can be mitigated by letting folk move fluidly to the place with the new stuff, hype, etc.
I’d venture to say the wealth of options keeps players engaged in the Warcraft family of products.
Keep em all and add Eras for both TBC and Wrath.
The player base isnt fragmented. If any one of those 6 games were not live then I would bet most of those players would simply not play. If Anni servers didn’t exist I would simply not be playing right now.
I dont know why People like you believe limited choice would force higher populations for the game you like.
This is what I am saying. Alot of people I knew quit because of cataclysm back in 2010. Because the changes were terrible. And they were only interested in classic up through wrath. Period.
And now, blizz no longer has those subs. Becaus, they don’t like retail. And don’t like cata classic going forward. Or, aren’t a huge fan of permanent vanilla classic era even though we have that lol. We should, at the very least, get permanent bc and wrath era servers going. That would satisfy everyone at that point.
Like I am not a big fan of vanilla era. Eat me yo lol. And I hate classic plus and classic sod. I think it’s dumb.
I know people who will never sub again until we get permanent bc and wrath era servers going. It’s simple as that. Because the current options are not designed for them. So they aren’t playing.
Wrath era was just simply better than both vanilla and bc combined to me in my op. But god forbid we get permanent wrath and permanent bc era realms created. Vanilla is just the end all be all of classic servers apparently. 7 different variations of that one era. Would be a crime to have permanent versions of bc and wrath to.
100% this. If we didn’t have anniversary progressing into TBC I would straight up not be playing any version of WoW. I don’t like ERA that much, SoD was trash for me and I absolutely hate Cata and beyond. Won’t touch retail.
So, there’s nothing to “fragment”
I’m only doing vanilla again to be ready for TBC with multiple toons and gold for epic flying the second I hit 70.
I don’t even plan on playing anniversary until I hear and see the official post talking about how permanent wrath classic era realms are coming.
Like I am not getting toons started, just to see them trashed in cata anniversary classic. Like, it’s a joke. I want a permanent wrath era realm made. Like yesterday.
