And yet have the intellectual logic as a 4 year old…
Guess knowledge doesn’t grow with age with some
Actually, Ammo and weapon skills and soul shards and long quest chains across multiple zones and spell ranks were ALL fun.
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And here the problem rears its head again. As a ghost player, nobody will notice when you leave. Most never knew you were there to begin with. You didn’t even fit into any statistics to be recognized that way instead.
I would support this even though I won’t play it. The truth is blizzard had a chance to do this with cata launch, they chose not to for whatever reason, maybe the same reason they didn’t do tbc era.
Its unfortunate but I’m 99% sure we won’t be seeing any wotlk era servers.
Who are you? What are you on about?
Wait your turn or say something actually useful
Once again this thread, like all of the others like it, has degenerated to a group hurling insults at us.
Telling us that we should not be allowed to have fun our way even though it has no impact WHATSOEVER on what you enjoy or want to do. Typical cancel culture.
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Long quest chains were fun, yeah. Soul shards were more funny than fun, but in some ways they were still a net positive.
Weapon skills are just another way of adding game time padding, and separating you from the new loot you got. Not fun, serves no purpose. But if you mean items and racials that increase weapon skill, those are fun, and exist as Hit Rating and Expertise Rating now.
Spell ranks were never good. They were the major cause behind casters being lower damage and having a more difficult time scaling.
Ammo was never fun. It was a 30 second event every couple days to stock 20k arrows into your bag.
Well let’s at least agree to disagree. Cata Taæents made me a one-way killer mashine with no freedom of choice, having a slavering pet from level one.
Feeding my pet, buying ammo, selecting which spells I wanted to get or not … all these things made levelling fun. But I give up here. You cannot see anything in the game but raiding (and possibly PvP) I did all the Raids when TBC and Wrath was actual content. Now I’m too laid back for this. I just wanted to level my main and all the alts I had room for in the Character list (leaving room for HC) in different race/Class combos to max level.
I never imagined that the servers would progress to Cata - and not without Era servers for Wrath. Else I would never ever have forwarded ANY of my characters to TBC.
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In fairness, Blizzard did say right at the beginning of Wrath that there were no plans at that time for permanent Wrath servers.
Yes? Well … I am sad now that I did not spend more time on Social media than playing.
ANd I totally agree with Revenor
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There is merit to playing a game in your own way, or in unintended ways. I think it should be pretty clear though, that the WoW devs had a direct goal in mind for what players would participate in and how, even as far back as Vanilla. An intended path. Declining to participate in that is perfectly within your right, but it’s like buying a car not to drive it, but to sit in your driveway and listen to the radio.
Products have intended ways to be used, and intended audiences to sell to. I’m sorry to say that the nebulous nature of ghost players makes them a risky market, and more likely than not, a non-profitable one. I honestly think private servers are the best place for this type of player, where they can play how they want for however long they want. Blizzard simply has a fiduciary responsibility to keep the product treadmill running, for as many customers as they can.
And this means moving on, with a shiny new product to capture FOMO and attention.
Declining to raid is like having a car, but never driving on the highways, only shopping, holidays visiting and all the other ways you can use a car. WoW was made like a kind of sandbox game, open for different playstyles and interests in gaming. This is what has kept the game alive all these years.
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That’s a pretty good continuation of the analogy, I like it.
I would add a caveat though, only Vanilla was really designed liked a sandbox. Even in TBC, you can see a dramatic increase in the linearity of progression, from the design of quests even to the way gearing is changed.
I somewhat agree, but it was still possible to play in many ways. The levelling in BC and Wrath still was a fun journey in it’s own rigth. It is not until later - even later than Cata - that levelling turned into only an introduction to the endgame.
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Interestingly Blizzard has taken a different stance on this within the last year or so.
They have publicly stated that they want their games to fit into whatever players want it to be, and that they want to appeal to as wide of a range of audience as possible. There’s a reason why there have been so many WoW “experiments” lately.
Blizzard also doesn’t see players as “ghost players” just because ironforge.pro does. They have stated that the mid core and casual playerbase hasn’t really been served well and they want that to be better, and they are working toward that. For Classic it could be argued that hardcore was created for those who enjoy leveling. For retail, there’s a reason why warbands are being put in, as well as the follower dungeons. I’m all for encouraging social things like raiding and being part of a guild but not every player enjoys raiding and that is ok.
Here’s a Youtube video showing what I’m talking about with Blizzard wanting to make multiple player types happy: Holly Longdale: How World of Warcraft Is Now Different (youtube.com)
As for asking for TBC and Wrath Era servers I can understand why people don’t want this forum to be flooded with these topics but on the other hand, I can also understand why people are asking for these and will continue to.
That splitting the playerbase slant gets said a lot and there is almost some fear that people will choose differently if another option is on the table, which at this point there are 6 different “types” of WoW to play already, so does that even matter anymore? Cata can stand on its own with the population of Classic players who want to keep moving forward and seeing expansion progression. Right?
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Yeah, I think Blizzard is remembering what made OG Vanilla so popular- it was way more accessible for all skill levels and commitment levels than competing MMOs, and I’m glad to see that restored to Retail. I like Retail and I like Classic, which could easily make me a punching bag for both.
What we are discussing though is Classic, and with the neglect the Classic team sees, I doubt they’re going to invest so many resources as to make the casual and mid-level gameplay viable long-term.
My worry is primarily based in people being extremely judgmental and/or prone to mob mentality. Personal example - I’m running a small guild of ~15 people right now in Cataclysm, mostly just friends. ~5 of them genuinely wanted to play Cataclysm, ~9 just wanted to play with friends and didn’t care, and ~6 openly disliked the idea of Cataclysm (before ever playing it) and only stuck around to be with friends.
All but one has changed their opinion on Cataclysm now that they’ve played through it and done some raiding. This was less likely to happen if Wrath Era existed, as many would have just allowed their opinion to be formed by others instead of trying it themselves.
Edit - Two things come to mind, related to this:
- “The customer is always right”. A common fallacy. The customer is rarely right, but they have the right to be wrong with dignity.
- The customer is often really good at finding something they don’t like or is unfun, but they’re really bad at figuring out or explaining why.
At least I know why I did not like Cata first time around. I played it exactly to be with friends, but had an option like Era existed back then I would not have hesitatted to go there, same as today.
So now I stop playing instead. I do not think this is any better for the game.
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Fallacy. Redirecting attention from all of the upvotes.
Likes are meaningless. 15 people could easily create 150 likes.
People have been playing and having fun till now. Their fun has been taken away so now they come here to complain. It’s not rocket science.
I also never posted - or even visited these forums until the great consolidation disaster, where I joined the forums to fight for our RP servers.
If you cared to look him up here you’d see that he has been a member of these forums 4 whole years longer than you … does this make him any more right than you (or I) who’ve only been a member since 2022?
Loads of posts here are no guarantee for being right - or wrong.
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