For the past 7ish months I have been working day in and day out to create a community. When Cata first launched we were running 25’s, but that wasn’t the way to go … we were growing too fast, so I refocused on our community culture and values, and decided growing slower and keeping a focus on compatible personalities and long term community goals, rather than filling raid seats, was our first priority.
Now we’re almost back to 25’s again, but with people who are social and online often.
And then Blizz announced a fresh round of Era servers.
I’m trying to cope. I’m adapting our discord to suit both. But what I see probably going to happen, is a cascade effect:
- buncha people going to get hype about fresh Era servers
- they’re going to share that hype once they launch
- more people will swallow that hype and go to Era servers
- and everyone who would rather play Cata will be left with an empty guild
- so they’ll go to Retail.
So basically… Blizz tried to kill Classic Progression with refusals to fix bugs and that didn’t totally kill it, so this was plan B. And it’s going to work.
And I’m extremely depressed about it. The community I thought I would be able to keep together for years and years into the future, is probably about to die.
And yes, before anyone asks, this is my first guild lol. I’m sure this is just a new version of something that has happened a million times before.
PS: there aren’t enough small, unmarked bills in the world to make me play Era, let alone to make me start over building up the guild again from scratch in a version of WoW i absolutely do not want to play.
UPDATE: I took a poll and there are FAR fewer ppl who are going to jump ship to Classic Classic, than I expected. We might even be doing FL 25’s next week! Spiral of depression averted lol
13 Likes
This is going to decimate some guilds for sure. People wants to play “fresh” every single week at this point. And other people wants to play certain expansions only as well.
It’s not going to get better I think for some guilds.
3 Likes
They have absolutely no clue of what they are doing. They are splitting the community again and again and again and again.
People are playing this game because it is MASSIVELY MULTIPLAYERS.
Imo we wipe everything classic and force everyone to start over again. But having cataclysm + SOD + ERA + FRESH ERA is an awful idea.
7 Likes
When/if the current run of Classic Progression ends, I personally am going to SWTOR and starting over there. I’m not starting over in any version of WoW.
2 Likes
I dont think it’s a bad idea if the classic “team” actually had the personal power to keep up with all of this expansions they are trying to put up.
It’s insane how terrible long p1-p2 of cataclysm was and how buggy the game still is. And they want to release more servers? it’s clearly all about the money not the quality of the product…
1 Like
100% what a shame honestly.
1 Like
seems they are really trying to kill cata and beyond imo
2 Likes
I don’t think they’re trying to kill anything. I really start to think they’re completly clueless.
2 Likes
They just announced they’re removing one “M” out if their Classic line of “MMO’s”
4 versions of Classic.
2 versions of HC.
…yay…
1 Like
Classic servers just need to die. Make ppl play retail again or don’t play. I’m tired of the fractured community
1 Like
If I could bring my collections over to retail I would make the swap. I just don’t want to re grind thousands of achievements that I’ll never get the people for.
1 Like
That is less money. Only blizzard knows who of us has not even bought TWW. I am +1 on that list, that is all I know.
You seem to be banking on if there is no classic we’d rush to tww. that is a gamble. I’d need more than a house in midnight to whip out a preorder for it. and they’d not get money till midnight is actually here. that be 3 or 4 quarters of less money.
And retail team does not use classic team resources.
Aggrend and friends did not wipe out retail guild banks. Ion and friends did. Aggrend wiped some cata guilds tab 7…but they had restore options that time lol.
1 Like
And yet the excuse for no TBC/Wrath servers was they didn’t want to fracture the playerbase…
1 Like
I wasn’t thinking that, but that’s awesome!
And yeah, while I think you’re looking at the negative end of it, I don’t disagree with most of your take.
The way that I see it, the direction that Retail has gone is to automate much of the groupfinding process, which in-turn reduces the onus on the playerbase to form their own community driven group forming, building, etc.
I think this appeals to some people, and most people probably think this is what they’d prefer, because they’d rather someone else do the work for them anyway, but the end result is that it effectively pushes away those who would lead community building efforts, because there is not much of a challenge, or a game, or a need for them left.
Ultimately, this results in (at least what I consider to be) a rather hollow feeling gaming experience, at least from the RPG and community perspectives. But from a lobby gaming perspective, it’s pretty great.
Anyway, I’m not really sure who each of the versions being offered is intended to appeal to, but there are many choices. And if you keep focusing on building your own community, whichever version that is, you will most likely be able to do so!
Good luck out there.
1 Like
Yeah I don’t think I can bring myself to play vanilla again, it was fun a few years ago but I don’t know now. I’m enjoying cata right now and this will just fracture the playerbase even more. Maybe they need to combine servers, it doesn’t matter how many servers there are as long as there’s a good number of people on those servers.
3 Likes
When this progression of classic wow ends I’m done with blizzard forever.
3 Likes
Cata is exposing the difficulty settings for WoW as something Classic Andy won’t adapt to… They see this plain as day…
Retail has a cult like following for Cata and MoP… they have obviously decided to just cater to that type also.
WoW is now about “choose your adventure” with new mega servers to cultivate that experience. Classic was just an experiment that worked out well especially for collecting data.
I came to classic looking for that old sense of community we had back in the day. It was a mixed bag, but the big thing was I had a group of friends and most of us stuck together from MC all the way to clearing ICC… Then everyone was suddenly done, and I’m left with a handful of people that barely log on.
I can’t do it again, I can’t put in all that effort for another round knowing the friends I made along the way are probably just going to jump ship.
Ive been through this. Was a guild and raid leader in TBC. People kept leaving our guild (stuck in kara) the moment they would get geared enough to join a 25 man. One thing i wish i had done? Got the socials of the people who were awesome.
And then, go play with your friends. Or join a new guild. The GUILD isn’t as important as the people. And i wish i had known that. And cared more about that. Instead i was angry at the people who left. I was angry at myself for not being able to carry the guild to 25s on my own.
And now all i wish is that i knew were they were.
1 Like
FWIW this model has worked great for EverQuest w/ re-launching fresh/progression servers. I’m curious to see how the WoW community holds up to it / same level of interest.
Definitely not for everyone, that’s to be sure.