The problem I see is kind of complicated - if you just progress live servers into TBC, then in essence you kill classic.
If you allow character copy, how do you handle gold duplicating? (I.e. I clone character A with all my gold to the TBC server, log into vanilla, transfer all gold to toon b, log out, clone, etc…) is there an opt in window or are all toons passively cloned?
My preference:
Have a 24 hour maintenance for all servers in which every character is cloned to a TBC server. I.E. all my Whitemane classic characters are passively cloned to Whitemane on the TBC servers.
All gold is reduced by 95%, all non soul bound items are destroyed.
Classic servers are linked or mergedlike live servers to increase visible population.
It’s a monstrous conundrum blizzard has to solve… I don’t think there’s any clear cut solutions that will satisfy everyone. I see one of two things happening.
They open server transfers to TBC ones, all gear, gold, items, etc are preserved.
Classic is preserved in it’s current form. TBC will be treated as a separate game entirely. No transfers of any sorts and new characters will need to be created for TBC Classic.
Both have major consequences, the first will have major economic problems that will start day 1. The second will drive a lot of players looking to continue away as well as cause a massive unbalancing between the factions.
I suppose they could do a mix of both if they are trying to hedge there bets, but it’s unclear which is the lesser of two evils.
All current servers turn into Classic TBC servers.
For those that wish to play Classic Vanilla, they’ll either have free transfers to new Vanilla only servers, with obvious restrictions such as deletion of any TBC items and deleveling if you make it past 60 for some reason OR there will be character copies with very heavy gold/item restrictions.
The percent of the population wishing to stay in Vanilla forever will pale in comparison to the folks eager for TBC Classic, but there’s no reason to imbalance the economies of the Vanilla-only realms with absurd copying exploits.
I am almost 100% certain this will NOT happen. This isn’t a normal transition between vanilla to TBC. There will be those who wish to remain as a classic realm. It will either be a transfer or fresh, which it is remains to be unseen, but it would be such a disservice to force those into TBC who want their characters in classic preserved in it’s current form.
I have no doubts every current server will become a TBC server and if you want to play Vanilla forever, there will be newly made looping Vanilla servers (cycle from P1 to P6, reset) to copy/transfer over.
Blizzard/Activision have made exactly ZERO statements about the conditions for TBC. To blindly assume anything with certainty about TBC at this point is foolhardy.
Same. I see Classic as staying a museum and your characters getting cloned to TBC passively at some point (I.e. so your friend from TBC can’t lend you all his classic gold, then you transfer, essentially duplicating gold). At some point, everything will have to be snapshotted and cloned over all at once.
Trying to work out delivering or removing TBC items is time Actiblizz won’t be spending.
That’s why if they don’t snapshot, they will need to do something like delete all non-bound items, and tax gold by a high percentage. If you are gold capped, even at 90% tax, you can still buy epic flying four times over day 1.
I didn’t cite anything, I just don’t foresee Blizzard doing anything other than providing the smoothest and most seamless transition for the largest portion of Classic’s players, which are the TBC eager folks. The smoothest and most seamless transition would be for Fairbanks (my current server) to simply become a TBC server, just like it happened so many years ago.
The last survey asked about fresh Classic Vanilla servers that restart at Phase 1 as well as fresh Classic TBC servers, so unless they abandon the idea entirely, there’s a very high likelihood that Classic Vanilla servers will exist separate and apart from TBC, and have a life cycle before restarting. Since this sort of restart thing is not a majority favored thing, I fail to see any reason why current servers would become Classic Vanilla only.
IMHO, the worst choice is to simply make copies of all characters. Because that is also copying all of the gold bloat (much if not most was illegitimate from goldsellers and bots), as well as the goldselling bots/farmer characters themselves.
Personally I would be fine if they nuked everything and simply had fresh vanilla as well as fresh TBC. But accept that many want to remain playing their existing characters in vanilla. That said, they will need to, and should, consolidate those who chose to remain in vanilla into fewer more healthy servers. Those who want to transfer to TBC, fine well and good, shovel that bloat and bad characters to that version of the game and as with non-fresh classic consolidate the populations into more healthy server caps. But again, give an option for fresh TBC servers.
Based on what? Your own opinion? I vehemently disagree, I’m sure there are plenty of folks who would agree with me as well. If that is what you personally want that’s fine, but stop implying what is best and/or easiest with zero evidence.
If the majority of players want to go to TBC, then when TBC Classic launches they should have to do the least amount of interface choices, selections, etc to get started. The smoothest and most seamless transition would be logging into the same character I always do, as I always have done, and find myself capable of going through the Dark Portal.
I’m not sure how this is difficult to grasp. This isn’t something to contest. If I had to select all my characters that I wanted to copy over or transfer to a new location, even if it is a quick, 1-step process, that’s still more than just logging into Fairbanks and getting on Fasciae.
So those who want Classic to be preserved as is don’t matter? This isn’t a simple evolution to a new expansion. Some want the original experience preserved.
So your that adamantly opposed to a one step process? Also If we are talking about the absolute smoothest transition from a technical perspective, treating TBC as a separate game would 100% be the easiest approach. No transfers necessary from Vanilla → Vanilla Perpetual or Vanilla → TBC.
It isn’t that you don’t matter, it is that you’re in the minority, so you’ll likely get catered to in some fashion (like the cycling Vanilla servers from the survey), but you’ll have to xfer/copy your character over when they’re released.
I’m opposed to fracturing the TBC or Vanilla communities. If TBC forces me off Fairbanks to something new, my whole guild is gone, along with loads of other guilds, leaving behind the small minority of Vanilla dedicated folks on a now very large, but very empty server, and separated from any other Vanilla-only folks similarly stranded elsewhere. Blizzard could merge the servers I suppose, or crossrealm them, but now Blizzard has forced everyone to relocate for TBC while also having to audit the old servers and cram them back together.
We’ll see what they do, and frankly I don’t care so long as I can bring my current characters through the portal, but I don’t expect their decision to not favor the majority. I especially expect them to NOT make a decision that would force a mass transfer of every single character at the same time.
“I’d love to play TBC right now but the character transfer servers are entirely full so I can’t do anything.”
Personally, I’d like to be able to “Upgrade Character” on the Character login screen, which would upgrade from WoW Classic to TBC Classic.
They can do this without launching “new” servers. Additionally when creating new Classic characters, you can select whether to create them as WoW Classic or TBC Classic, but always have the option to upgrade.
This can allow for active players to decide to upgrade to experience the TBC Classic pre-patch, without having any additional consequences for inactive players. It also allows for players or guilds in the future to progress through all content, if they so desire.
This is an assumption at best. If that’s your opinion, again fine, but you cannot state what will or won’t happen without any empirical data. How do you even know who is in the minority/majority of what players want?
How would character copying from a cloned server cause any fracturing? If the option is Fairbanks Classic → Fairbanks TBC I fail to see the issue. If people choose to remain in Vanilla that is there prerogative.
Again you are making assumptions on a possible technical limitation with zero evidence to support your claim. Cloning servers and forcing separation from Classic like it is from Retail is just as likely for TBC in this scenario.
I personally favour starting fresh, and I hope that option exists in some form or another but there’s no information to know if they will or not.
It is the most likely scenario given how Blizzard has operated for the past 15 years. Solutions are tailored to the majority first, with niche interests tacked on in some other fashion. I have no reason to believe that Blizzard thinks there will be some massive and thriving Vanilla-only crew of people, especially given the reactions to both surveys, so I have no reason to believe Blizzard to treat Vanilla and TBC populations equally.
Because now you have a “Fairbanks Classic” that is filled with loads of untouched and unplayed characters, which then limits how much merging Blizzard can allow. The Vanilla community would be only those people on Fairbanks that are into just Vanilla, which means the giant populated server becomes a ghost town.
Better to have the option to send Vanilla enthusiasts to a concentrated location rather than scattered across all the current servers. If such an option existed, it isn’t like anyone I know (myself included) would touch the Vanilla versions of our characters again.
I’m making assumptions based upon Blizzard’s lack of foresight in the past. If we all jump into the same server system to transfer or copy characters over at once, we’re going to bog down their infrastructure and likely disrupt/crash the process, just like we overwhelmed the crap out of the Classic servers at launch. They are not going to want us all fiddling with the character service systems at the same time. It is entirely silly to think otherwise.
They’ve surveyed about it so it is at least an option they’ve weighed, but no guarantees until February at the earliest.