I agree that there is a risk to splitting the community, but I would also posit that SoD and tbc also caused risk for the Era community, and the community has shown their resilience.
From the ironforge pro data Era has about 15k raiders, while wrath has 190k and SoD 180k. While 15k isn’t a ton of player it is also not a miniature community (especially when compared to the more promoted versions of the game) - and there are probably quite a few players on Era that never make it to 60 and raid.
But I truly believe Era is the best gamemode and I have no fear that the community will split and ultimately dwindle. On the contrary, I think seasons create a dynamic way for Era to grow in a healthy manner overtime.
- Vanilla in phases provides excitements and new changes each phase that cannot be recreated in a static p6 server.
- It is the best time for new players to join since the playfield starts equal every 2 years.
- Everyone ends up back at Era so there is more value to Era itself (as the true engame) and I think a lot people that are raiding there today would continue to do so while playing fresh.
So there is a risk to community, but there is also massive potential upside. While Era should remain static I think the risks from rolling fresh servers are dwarfed by the potential upsides.
Making totally wild guess, I would say that each 2 year fresh cycle would lead to the total Era population to grow by at least 500-5000 players that would now play on Era that didn’t before, but perhaps a ton more. Depending on the success of the fresh server.
Well rolling out that dopamine on a 2 year scheduled basis seems like the perfect amount to me. People that fail to achieve their goals in the first season, can prepare better for the next one. Even those preparations are social and create dopamine thinking about their potential successes in the next season.
Each phase has enough ‘challenges’ and ‘competitions’ to keep the most competitive players excited, as well as new little toys to keep the casuals playing. Sure the game often loses steam after AQ gates, but that’s okay - the die-hards will stays and those that quit can wait a few months and xfer to Era if they want to keep their ‘trophy toon’. And I think a lot of those people would end up logging into Era in the future and actually using that toon.
Playing a bit of SoD made me crave a fresh vanilla server more than anything. I can’t bring myself to level a toon to 40 because I just dislike the runes and a lot of changes to playstyle, I just doesn’t feel vanilla - mobs in the world die instantly, the only dangers are other players and while it is fun to blow people up, it isn’t the kind of pvp that I love in vanilla in which players have a lot of agency and ability to counterplay.
I love Era and even if blizzard did nothing I would be happy with just Era. But I advocate for a fresh because I think it is nice to have community events around the game I love, and fresh is basically 2 years of different community events happening (each phase is an event, leveling, racing to clear raids, etc.) they all bring people together in competitive pve and pvp.
The fact that people have ‘solved the game’ or whatever that means, I think actually makes each new season more exciting, it lets people try to play at a higher level instead of learning a class or hoping this or that is good at a specific thing they are interested in. It would be fundamentally different than all the other wow modes that players basically don’t know what the next patch will bring to their class.
I think releasing one or two fresh servers during SoD wouldn’t be the worst because SoD phases are kinda low in content, so it would give some bored players somewhere to play that they will never truly complete (so much to do in a p1 fresh vanilla). And I think SoD did attract players that haven’t played a standard vanilla so they may be interested to try the difference now that they have some experience with the rune-version.
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