I do not understand the theology behind the nochanges crowd. It is literally insanity to have access to wow’s history and see the changes that diminished core aspects of the game that happened over time; which ultimately drove people like myself away from the game and just say no changes.
Meanwhile you want all of those changes to happen again so long as they were exactly the same changes that deteriorated the game in the first place, just because they were made during Vanilla, TBC, or Wrath. You DO want changes, but you are scared of wrong changes, yet you will accept historical wrong changes because it is a familiar pain you can understand.
Here is my anecdotal evidence based on history of a similar game everyone knows of. I played WoW in Beta, picked up the live copy in 2005 played to 2008 and also played Runescape from 2002-2011. I mention runescape because I want to talk about it for a moment. I played until they broke the game from what most considered the fundamental core of the game. They abandoned their principles in trade for fantastical brand new revamping of the entirety of how the game functioned in the past, quick un-rewarding grabbies and store-bought perks/cosmetics. This irreversibly destroyed the game’s core community and drove everyone away and has not recovered since.
Fast forward a few years and similar to what we are seeing with Classic, Jagex was pressured to release an old version of the game because of private old-school servers dwarfing their core player base. They decide to release an old version of the game after an overwhelming community polled consensus and old school runescape saw a massive surge of returned player base and even new faces. Fast forward over the course of another year and the player base had dropped from 70,000 active paying members to less than 17,000. A 76% crash in player base, REGARDLESS of introducing previously loved content or… lets cut this short. (PHASES).
Jagex had one of the worst track records, one of the worst community support/relationships I’ve ever seen in my life. Yet they were able to bite their tongue hold their ego, look back into the principles of why and what made the game the #1 Free to play MMORPG and developed NEW CONTENT in the SPIRIT OF THE OLD. The moment they did that, the numbers bounced back from 17,000 to 55,000 in under a month and never dipped below that even until now, many changes since, 4 YEARS LATER at 76,000… More than the initial release population cap hype.
This post has gone long enough. Stop being scared of blizzard, by doing nothing at all and repeating the mistakes of the past in fear of the possible future… you are killing the game yourself. Classic + is how to go forward post naxx.
