And the game is 16 years old now. People have had over a decade and a half of feeling special about their exclusive pixelated items. Nothing wrong with people getting them now.
It’s a game.
And why not? They are not just going to keep porting expansions until we have Classic Shadowlands.
If Blizz wants to keep making as much money as possible from classic at some point, AND they do because they are a business fresh WILL happen.
Fresh is inevitable in the same way Classic WoW was inevitable, the question is when they do it and how they handle it. Keeping fresh servers around forever is not the best strategy when they will continue to open new ones, fresh servers will likely just merge into the old servers eventually if they aren’t deleted.
XP should be nerfed like 90% if there is someone much higher level in the instance imo.
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You may not, but they had their reasons for taking it out of the game in the first place.
I don’t care either way, but that would create a situation where people would use that as a money-making opportunity. Blizz is trying to crack down on stuff like that, not make it worse.
No, they will likely stop at Wrath.
I don’t think you’ll find too many people who want to play the old expansions after that (MAYBE MoP, but I suspect it would have a far smaller following than the first 3).
There might be some new servers open after TBC launches. Pretty sure they hinted at that. But if you think they will just continually open new servers or make a few that they wipe every year… I don’t see that happening.
No, they won’t. They won’t merge existing servers either. They haven’t done it in 16 years, where would you even get the idea they might do it in the future?
You’re assuming, incorrectly, that they will continually open fresh servers, not understanding the fact that the amount of people that wanted to play Classic on a regular basis isn’t as big as the initial push at launch.
Classic (and by extension TBC Classic) is a museum piece, just so people can enjoy the game all over again, or play it if they hadn’t before.
They aren’t going to put a ton of resources into it like you’re suggesting.
It’s not a ton of resources, it’s just the simplest way for them to continue making money off classic as not too many people actually want to play a permanent last phase server. Starting fresh servers only takes server maintenance and effort to moderate them basically, not the huge effort they had to put in to recreate classic in the first place.
Precedent will likely be set for server merges when TBC launches (remember they said something like “transfer to new classic servers or continue with your realm”) as it’s hard to see them keeping as many classic servers as there always have been when most players will be moving onto TBC.
Except you’re assuming, again incorrectly, that they are attempting to make money off Classic.
They’ve repeatedly said that the “Classic project” is a “free bonus” as part of your Retail subscription.
Now, you may never play Retail, but you ARE paying for Retail, and getting Classic, essentially, “for free”.
You can do whatever mental gymnastics you want to do to convince yourself that “I’m only paying for Classic!”, but that’s simply not the case, and Blizzard will happily tell you that.
Won’t happen at all, and there’s no evidence to suggest they are even considering that.
Blizzard did not make classic out of the good of their hearts, nor do they make any game for that reason. If they didn’t care about money they never would have made classic in the first place. Blizzard is a massive, publicly traded corporation who is beholden to their shareholders and makes these decisions for money.
If they believe they will make more money by making fresh servers than just keeping them as as museum for ten people to play forever, then they will do so.
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They did it to gain control back over their IP, rather than letting pservers run wild with it.
Blizz would rather have you paying them in some fashion and give you something you want, rather than have someone illegally offer you their game which is still an active IP.
Again, do whatever you need to do to convince yourself the “I’m paying for Classic!” but Blizz has stated many times, no, you’re paying for Retail, whether you play it or not.
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Blizz was under no legal obligation to make classic servers to protect IP. Pservers were relevant to them, but only because they showed demand.
Blizz certainly does not view it that way (you paying for retail). They track those who plays Classic and who plays Retail individually, would not make any sense not to.
As you said, they want you to pay them rather than go on pservers which is exactly why they’d want to do fresh in the first place. Since if blizz doesn’t do fresh pservers will, and blizz will lose subs because of it.
They 100% do, and they’ve stated it many times.
No, they weren’t, and I didn’t imply that’s why they did it. I DID imply, however, that they are actively protecting their IP by offering Classic and having people come HERE rather than to an illegal server. And if they can make some money off it to keep adding to the game and making other new properties, all the better!
But you’re still paying for Retail.
Of course, they do. Why wouldn’t they? You’re still paying a single sub to access ALL that content, and you’re subbed to Retail and get Classic “for free”.
Seriously, go look that up. It’s their official stance on the subject.
And those servers will get destroyed under legalities. Also considering they roped in some of the people running servers like that in the past, there are fewer groups doing pservers than before.
They aren’t hurting, and they likely fully expect some attrition. Hell, they were surprised at the number of people that showed up in the first place, that’s why they had to scramble to open new servers to accommodate everyone.
But they aren’t going to do many of the things you think they should do. They are making it because people wanted it, they saw people were going elsewhere to get it so they are doing this to end it, and they will likely not do much more than they have because people also wanted it to be as close to the original as possible.
Anyway, believe me or don’t, I’m done with this subject.
I think there’s so many that have a different idea on what “fresh” means, to them, that I have no idea what “fresh” even means, anymore:
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/what-is-fresh/879375
It’s their stance for why they can justify charging you $15 a month for a game that isn’t updated, it doesn’t mean that they can’t tell the difference between you subbing for classic and you subbing for retail. They can and do track who plays classic and who plays retail.
They don’t look at classic subs and think to themselves “Wow look at all this extra money we’re making from retail WoW!”
They can’t ban mage boosting, but they could AE cap damage so that big pulls are impossible. This was done in 2.0 for this exact reason. Mage farming like that is not a new thing discovered by private servers, it’s as old as WoW just like every other gimmick you see in Classic, it’s not new ideas, techniques or anything.
The only thing done by the private server community is to refine those techniques over a decade. That on its own is respectable, and IMO the private server community in terms of sweaty raiding min-max’s better than anyone I have ever seen, it’s actually really impressive.
I played Vanilla for years, and I never had a problem finding a group for elite quests or leveling dungeons.
Within a couple months of Classic WoW, the leveling zones were dead and everyone was boosting.
I hate to disagree with you, but makng money is Blizz’s only goal. Classic is a cash cow.
Fresh server peeps want either, to handicap others with more gold and mats than them, or give them a server that resets exactly as many times as it takes them to get server 1st.
That is all.
So you nolifed it in Classic, have a ton of gold, and you are scared the people on server you have a monopoly on will reroll fresh server. Got it.
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Since you think having fresh seasonal servers is flawed what would you recommend blizzard do?
If blizzard doesn’t do anything, Vanilla WoW and TBC servers will waste away into nothing… it would force those players to find private servers to play on.
Definition of MMORPG pulled up from a google search
noun
- an online role-playing video game in which a very large number of people participate simultaneously.
Looks like seasonal wow servers check that box
I think up and and including WOTLK is where it’ll go at this point. I don’t think blizzard is going to do Cata unless there is a demand for it from the community. I’m sure there will be, but it won’t be anywhere near as large as the demand for classic/tbc/wotlk. At some point it won’t be worth it to release further expansions because nobody will play them. I’m not even sure what expansions came after MoP, and I’ve only seen one person requesting MoP.
It doesn’t matter how they end up. It just matters how they start off.