We were?
Link please?
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Please see the link provided by Charax, posted above.
Why is this even a discussion? Blizzard cant force people to play Classic Era and you really wanted a Classic save point. No guarantees were made - read the ToS.
Also, timing is a thing. “Everyone” is off playing TBC and pretending like its new content. Eventually, one day, there will be a solid Classic base in which to enjoy your clone. Today is not that day.
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Seriously, I cannot believe anyone here would actually defend Blizzard not doing anything about this with a straight face and not be trolling.
Could you imagine if in retail WoW Blizzard only ever did connected realms ONCE, never added to the lists, and never offered free transfers from populated to less populated realms when the game started losing popularity from Cataclysm onward? Holy cow…
-the forums would be on fire daily
-every Blizzcon from like 2014 onward would have the devs getting hammered with “when are more realm connections coming?” at every Q&A session and Ion and others would be getting asked about it in person constantly
-the game would probably have a million fewer subscribers than it does now because a ton of people would’ve quit rather than pay $25 per character to move them off a completely dead, inactive realm or reroll and relevel from scratch. The game had already been out a decade when connected realms first started and folks weren’t going to put up with connected realms not regularly being expanded with that monthly sub fee.
-Blizzard would have the worst customer service reputation of any major MMO, they’d be on the level of the most shameless cash-grab mobile game developers.
So many connected Classic groups are so dead it’s hard to even get together enough 60s to do a DUNGEON let alone 20 or 40 man raiding. This is in no way acceptable for a MASSIVE MULTIPLAYER Online RPG. Blizzard has the means to fix this, they need to either get on it by connecting more groups to each other or start issuing Battle.net $15 credits to anyone who cloned their char to a Classic realm.
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For clarity, nobody is asking Blizzard to force anybody to play Classic. We just want Blizzard to allow the people who do want to play Classic to be able to play together.
There’s no reason to enforce segregation after 2 months. TBC is well past the initial hype phase and, from what I understand, most folks have fallen back into a pattern of raid logging.
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I guess I’m curious on what you base this sentiment on… the idea that players get bored of TBC and go back to their now dead Classic Era servers? It seems like not many people actually PAID to have their toons copied.
I guess you truly miss the entire point. (maybe Rogues just so used to playing solo with no friends you don’t even notice?)
MMORPG games like wow are designed to have large groups interacting (world pvp, 40 man instances, que pop for bg’s, people out questing and gathering materials to vendor on AH: rare drops, recipes, etc;
I brought this issue that is happening now BEFORE Classic even launched in 2019 and specifically told Bliz to DESIGNATE what servers will be ‘Forever Classic’ servers and what servers will be moving on to “Classic +/TBC” and beyond.
If people know they will be with others on their realms after all phases there would still be a strong community from people like me who know they will only ever play a Vanilla version of Wow. vs the retail/TBC fans that moved on.
IMO the only way to solve this is launch a handful of Fresh start lvl 1 servers.
The inane player programming these days is that every “issue” must be resolved in the immediate. We know what the score is and where we are at. As much as Id like to move forward Id rather they take their time and come up with a real solution that works instead of throwing stuff at a wall and hoping it sticks.
Just tossing everyone together sounds great in theory but theory and practice are miles apart when it comes to this dev team and this player base.
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Eventually the wheel comes back around. Before Classic there was a real yearning to play vanilla again. Its not present at the moment because there are other options and the TBC option includes the Classic Azeroth so its not like you have to choose Classic Era exclusively to play that content.
But yeah, eventually more people will opt to come back. Its just not going to happen when you want it to or think it should. It might take a year or more for Classic Era players to have a server option that isnt a borderline ghost town. Therefore the only real option is patience. Try preaching that to this crowd though.
Yeah your snark is bush league and the point is there is no point. No point in complaining. This was a reasonable expectation when taking the whole thing into consideration. Its one thing to voice your discontent with the situation. Its another to pass off your actions as someone else’ responsibility because you dont like the outcome of your actions.
Wow, thanks for this brilliant insight captain obvious. No one had any idea this was the case before you mentioned it. I think we all understand how MMOs function in an ideal situation. What we cant seem to grasp is that we arent owed jack squat just because our own expectations far exceed the not so unforeseen reality.
Yeah this is the consensus solution which just tells me people arent thinking very deep on this one. The way to resolve the fractured nature of the servers is to release more servers.
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While this issue maybe isn’t important to you, it’s important to others.
I wouldn’t call a period of 2 months “the immediate”. A knee-jerk reaction to the beginnings of a problem isn’t always appropriate, but we’re past that now. Populations are continuing to trend downwards and its self-fueling.
This is a problem that needs a solution. At the very least, this is a problem that needs a statement of intent from Blizzard on what’s happening. As it stands, it looks like we were offered a cloning service, sold on the implied promise of support for Classic Era, and then abandoned.
Even a temporary solution would be acceptable. Realm connections need not be permanent. While unlikely, if there’s worry that the Classic population will dramatically spike upwards in the coming months, Blizzard could temporarily connect the realms and inform us of this, so players don’t form guilds with servers that may lose connections in the future. It doesn’t have to be a perfect solution, just connect the players who are playing now together.
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Yeah abandoned by the players. You know that thing that you need for your clone purchase to have value in your eyes. So I guess the proactive response to this would be to start offering to pay peoples subs for them in exchange for them to play with you on a Classic Era realm of your choosing.
Beyond that youre just spinning your tires. The servers are still up and maintained aka the support you dont think exists.
I agree with you on increased realm connectivity but keep in mind that yes, its a temporary solution and not everyone is keen on this idea. What we need is more people playing Classic. Thats it. Its not on Blizzard to populate the servers and believe me they want that just as much as you do.
Other Blizzard solutions to help with this would be a lower monthly subscription rates for Classic only or a Free to Play model with a hard time limit - lets say something like 45 days unrestricted. And yeah, as loathe as I am to go there, maybe a fresh server or two with the caveat that they will be open to existing Era players via transfer after a set period of time.
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I think that’s all anybody is asking for. The game isn’t actually abandoned by players. Many have left, but there’s enough population to support a community, they’re just split between all the servers.
That’s the only thing required. If Blizzard wants to take other steps, that’s up to Blizzard, but being able to play together is all people really need.
Connected Realms =/= Merged Realms
So no, we were not told “mergers” were happening.
If I had my way, there would never have been so many realms at release. But bundling subs will do that to bloat.
Even across all the servers the population is kind of low, but manageable at least. I think if they reduce the number of servers and merge most of them together, this will boost confidence in the game being something viable for many people, and hence over a short period of time, there will be even more people online than the total now.
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I appreciate your interaction. But yes the way to resolve a handful of dead dying servers is to 1. merge them 2. provide a place for people to create a new (fresh)
if things are fractured and impossible to raid MC bc there are only 25 players online TOTAL (not all even 60) how do you play the MMORPG (that again requires players to be online… and progress)
What I don’t get is are you working for Bliz? “We messed everything up, just deal with it” seems to be your attitude.
I think the original posting player is absolutely right to voice their opinion. They made a well spoken statement that should be discussed… not ‘silenced’ because YOU ‘don’t want to hear it’
It seems to me all you do is denial instead of looking at the situation that was obviously bound to happen given the decisions Blizzard made. It’s not rocket science to know that if you push TBC most will go there. if you provide no home for Classic players the servers will die.
By all rights this poster should be entitled to a 100% refund (as well as every player who paid to preserve their toon on Classic copy) BUT I highly doubt Bliz will be so honorable… that’s why I make alternative suggestion of ‘fresh’ 
cheers
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This is the most absent-minded solution I have ever heard. Yes lets split the Classic Community even further than directly fix the pressing problem at hand.
My grandfather used to have a saying… “You’re picking the fly sh*t outta the pepper.”
If you want to nitpick for the sake of nitpicking, yes, connected realms are not the same as merged realms. You can go through my posts above and replace merged with connected and my posts convey the same message.
This is a problem for Blizzard to solve. How they solve it is not terribly important to those who care about this, just that it is solved. If they want to do it through mergers, connected realms, or any means, as long as Classic players can play with each other then we’re good.
I agree, to an extent. I liked that they handled initial loading with layering. It wasn’t ideal but it solved the problem. Dialing it back was nice but yea, there were totally too many servers at the start. Blizzard always knew they were going to have to deal with dwindling populations, more so with the launch of TBC. Here we are… it’s time to deal with it.
Truth be told, do you think Classic has more than a server’s worth of combined population at this point? It looks like “a server’s worth” would be around the 15k to 20k player mark.
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and your lack of common sense to the point of asking people to read EULA before purchasing a game service that is presented in such a transparent way is disturbing.
you might want to call it “lack of agency” but you’re undoubtedly possessed by an ideology called individualism. and you also lack common sense (which is the minimum requirement that people use to bond in society).
and related to the topic, i think that one solution to classic era might be 50% discount or free clone services. i’ve paid for the service but i wouldn’t mind if they do it for free if that means more population in the game.
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Yeah, that’s totally unreasonable, isn’t it.
Actually, I ask people to read the EULA before that start whining about having their rights infringed.
I’m possessed by an ideology of thinking. It’s pretty corner-case, I admit.
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yea, you think… like a sophist. that’s why you should leave logic for the grown-ups.
and thinking it’s not an ideology. but pretending you’re unbiased is.
Predicate algebracists, you mean.
I’ve got it.
Note to casual readers: When you can’t attack the argument, attack the debater.