The assumption is that there wouldn’t be issues if Era was an entirely separate client and codebase. That assumption is incorrect. People are only considering what’s happening now and not the alternative.
Make no mistake, I’m not pleased that Era bugs are being introduced and seemingly ignored, but the same policy failures that lead to that outcome would lead to similar outcomes in a multi-client scenario. The assumption is that Era would never need an update but that assumption is flawed. One need only google the list of Classic hotfixes from 2019 until now to see that this assumption is also incorrect.
The required maintenance for separate clients wouldn’t be at all similar, it would be a small fraction of the hypothetical effort Blizzard would have to expend to keep up with merged client bugs in Era.
Keep in mind that starting in 2019, Classic Era was phased. So every few months content was added. Then the Classic Era client was messed with to prepare for the TBCC pre-patch, then SoM.
But there was a ~year long period from a few months before SoM ended (November 2022) until SoD started up (October 2023) that gives us a glimpse into what a single stream Era client would look like – and it’s worlds better than what we have. Look at how many hotfixes were necessary in Era during that period. The only major bugs I recall were related to layering, exposed because of the increase in Era population.
I count 14 hotfixes prior to TBC:Classic’s release date, which proves that maintenance on the Vanilla only client was required. It’s logical to then suggest that these are not the only bugs and that, had Era remained an isolated client, it would have required further maintenance.
On November 9th, 2021 I see an issue being fixed with regards to colour blind mode having issues with DX12 on newer graphics cards. This is something that would need to be fixed for all clients. If this was an issue for you at the time and it got fixed in TBC but you were playing Era where it wasn’t fixed, would this not have upset you? Furthermore, if in fixing the issue for Era it caused some conflicts with the code (because it’s a different code base) that were not forseen and caused other problems, then you would be upset and clamoring for Blizzard to unify the clients so these kinds of mistakes don’t happen.
The issue I highlighted here also brings attention to something that I think Era players tend to forget. While we might imagine we’re in our own isolated little bubble and that nothing changes, this is not true. The machines we’re using to play the game are not the same ones, running the same software and drivers, that we used in 2004 to 2006. If you want to continue to play a 20 year old game on modern hardware, it’s going to have to evolve. That means making code changes and making code changes means there is the potential for mistakes and unintended side effects.
You are focused on the wrong thing here. The issue is the bugs and the policies and practices at Blizzard that allow Era bugs to continue to go unaddressed for extended periods of time. These are what should be getting attention.
Trying to backseat dictate Blizzard’s multi-client approach helps no one.
Given what we’ve experienced it clearly is not. Or perhaps it’s like you say and their QA is not giving Classic Era the attention it needs. Either way, development of SoD is negatively impacting Era. And we should not just eat our sandwich and pretend to enjoy it.
Perhaps this isn’t a popular opinion within a ‘corporate’ environment, but I personally rather color-blind people using specific new hardware have slight issues for a few months than the entire population unable to whisper, tons of addons breaking every few months, and newly introduced visual bugs that go months without being fixed.
A separate client doesn’t mean that the team won’t be able to navigate the code and implement fixes, it just means that they perhaps will have to make slightly different fixes for each version. But really that would depend by how far they’ve diverged the other (SoD client) as it would still mostly be a copy of the Era one.
With merged clients, Era is now full of SoD bloat that continues to introduce issues for all Era players. The fact that each patch the bugs seem to get more severe and less expected (ex. random things in AQ breaking, whisper bug) kinda hints at the fact that the team isn’t getting closer to building comprehensive tests to prevent such in the future.
I may be somewhat new but I have enough experience to discuss potential tradeoffs of each approach.
We can make a list of changes / fixes that an Era only client would have needed from the release of TBC to today:
Hardcore mode
Color blind patch
Anything else? I heard in passing there was some fix done to manage fly hacking or something. There are also the totally optional, and arguably negative, 1.14 / 1.15 changes but Era would have been fine without those.
There will always be maintenance needed overtime, as any product with so many users will need, but I think the team at blizzard would have been totally fine implementing those changes on one client and doing that + whatever crazy SoD changes on another.
Imo the best argument against multiple clients is really that it would be more annoying for users to swap between game modes. The fact that fixes are easier for devs doesn’t feel like a valid reason when in exchange they’ve introduced nearly a dozen severe bugs in under a year in 20 year old software, as well as constantly breaking addons.
Regular server maintenance is a reasonable expectation. Having your game impacted by another game you don’t play is not. In theory, nothing about Era should change. In practice its been the opposite. Peoples gripes are legitimate.
We are now unable to buy items on the auction house as ‘this feature is restricted’ I think it is now time to separate Era from this consolidated client. Enough is enough, we dont care about the state of sod, there is zero benefit for Era players this far in terms of the consolidation. Separate Era from season of disappointment, do it now. Blizzard your consolidation efforts are far below where they need to be for this to function.
sandwich and pretend to enjoy it.