SoD will stop getting new content. But they’ll continue to host those servers. The characters won’t go to Era. They’ve said this.
Anniversary…they could say more about. My gut tells me they intend to continue to Wrath. If they were doing a TBC Era, they’d probably have said so. But who knows.
Unless they have changed something, they were planning to put them in “era” realm (as in they exist forever) with sod rules. Basically means, chars will exist but no more updates.
Most likely so with a price tag. Free money for them.
No. Too many versions and every expansion would want to have one. That would never stop. At the end we would have:
Vanilla Era
Vanilla Hardcore
TBC Era
TBC Hardcore
Wrath Era
Wrath Hardcore
Cata Era
Cata Hardcore
MoP Era
MoP Hardcore
…
Progessive Classic
Season of whatever
Fresh from Vanilla 2.0
Retail
Mostly likely goes to Wrath, or even MoP. Same answer as before - no era.
If I would have to guess it’s either MoP or Legion. Pretty sure Blizzard doesn’t know either. Just depends on feedback.
I think these versions could get removed. I feel like the general consensus is cata and forward are “new wow” and if you want “new wow” experience you just play retail? idk thats my thought.
I wonder if its possible and less work/maintenance to have a dedicated “layer” on each of these servers for hardcore as opposed to having a whole separate server? If not i feel like with the right talent restrictions you could just have 1 large vanilla-wotlk hardcore server and just have certain stuff “content blocked” until you want to progress to level 70 or 80 or whatever.
I think overall what they should do is have 1 vanilla era 1 tbc era and 1 wotlk era. Every 5 years do a “fresh” vanilla > wotlk progression. And at the end of each expansion option to move to era or progress to the next expansion. I feel like this would kinda of give these classic servers some resurgence every few years with potentially new players transferring to era realms and not feeling like theyre dropping into a realm that had maxx out naxx players when they have nothing,
the lack of transparency really infuriates me. it makes me feel like we arent even wanted here. they threw us a bone to shut us up and collect and additional million+ dollars per month but cant even be transparent about what they are doing to address issues or even give us an actual road map. months to by without the devs communicating with us.
Your thoughts are irrelevant here. If they bend their knees by releasing TBC or/and Wrath era, everyone wants to be a special snowflake. You will even hear some people asking for Shadowlands Era realms. Everyone enjoys wow differently.
Thats not the general consensus at all, no. Retail has absolutely, I mean ABSOLUTELY, nothing to do with the ones I listed.
Shocker!, Even MoP is over 10 years old. You know what 10 years is? The same age Wrath had when they announced Classic.
Don’t expect Blizzard to do more than the bare minimum.
I think Era servers are pointless besides Vanilla. Vanilla is the only expansion that actually got REAL content removed from the game.
No reason to stop at wrath. Thats an arbitrary expansion.
Actually it does the opposite. You can see that on the anniversary realms and sod. People are sick of doing the same thing over and over and over and over in such a short time. Sure some people love that but thats a niche in an already niche community. Their strat of giving each expansion a lot of breathing room is actually the best thing they can do for the health of classic.
Theyre as relevant as yours or anyone elses. If blizzard looks at the numbers and sees the pops are far too low they wont bother
If you look at the games before and after cata you could argue WHY classic exists. Different world. Different Mechanics. Different talent trees. Cata and forward are when they change the game dramatically from where it was in WOTLK and before so idk if i agree and i doubt the classic community agrees that Age of an expansion =/= determines if its “classic”
The reason being what i stated before. Cata Forward are not “classic” anymore despite the expansions age
Can you though? Seems like comparatively to Classic Era, anniversary has some pretty high pop numbers. Who knows what will happen after anniversary ends. Maybe they move to era. Maybe to move to tbc (if thats an option).
I fail to see the problem. Play the version of the game you want to play. If someone finds deep engagement in WoD Era, who are you to tell them they have to play some other version of the game?
The bottom line is, if Blizzard doesn’t provide it they’re either going to find somewhere else to play, or find another game. So it’s not like you trying to hold their gaming time hostage is going to make a difference to you.
The problem is: There is a limit to how many versions the game can handle. This is not a private server. Each “version” needs maintenance and support. People already complain in BOTH SoD and Cata that the dev team is completely overwhelmed and can’t do things right.
I know everyone wants to be a special snowflake. I wish I had all versions from League of Legends Season 1-10 but that’s not going to happen.
Just your out out touch opinion. Your argument is “you can just play retail” which is the most out of touch argument for what a “classic” expansion is and what not. Mists of Pandaria, or even Legion simply does not exist at this stage in Retail. The game goes through phases. Your (biased) opinion is irrelevant to this discussion, case closed.
They are not. It’s not even 1% what Classic 2019 was. Heck it barely competes with Cata classic which you don’t even consider “classic”
This is a different issue and effectively boils down to a regression problem and the segregation of their different environments.
There’s a key difference between WoW and your example. LoL season 1-10 was never released and restructured for a legacy content release. WoW was. We’ve already had TBC, WotLK, and now Cata. The heavy lifting for getting them to work again has been done.
There is one. Not on the technical front but on the social front and even more so in the financial front. Servers are not cheap and hosting a server for 10 people is not gaining them anything just to make 10 people happy. I’m not going to pretend that I’m Blizzard’s CFO so I can’t tell you at how many people a server is giving them a net benefit.
Which you would have with over 15 versions. If the retail client is changing something important, EVERY SINGLE version has to be changed as they are clearly synching each version with the retail client.
That’s another issue here which you don’t understand. It doesn’t end by just giving era servers. It didn’t end with that in Vanilla either. People will crave for more and ask something similar to SoD or they will quit and then you have again a net deficit for those servers. On free servers such as private servers endless servers tend to work, because well… they are free [with ingame shop, some even p2w]. And even on those, people tend to go with the hype of fresh servers or custom servers.
It’s not as simple as turn the servers on and make everyone happy. Blizzard is an insanely greedy company and not going too deep into politics but currently companies need money more than ever before.