I know that the whole purpose of this idea was to satisfy the Classic players back when Nostalrius was shut down. But am I the only one that feels these types of servers would still be good for the game? For those that are unaware, the idea of Pristine Servers were basically normal servers that excluded dungeon and raid finder. They quickly abandoned the idea, and now it is mostly forgotten due to Classic being released soon. However I feel they could still tackle this idea and build upon it. For instance, imagine a handful of servers that, not only would forgo the dungeon and raid finder system, but would also tune the world content to be more difficult, completely turn off heirlooms, and make it so you can’t access the mounts shared among your normal characters in other servers, ultimately making you start from scratch again (just for these servers).
It would ultimately give the player-base the autonomy of choosing the more streamlined retail wow, or go for this more hardcore experience (WoW hardmode you could say). Any thoughts?
Probabaly not the only one, but there are very few who do.
Pristine servers would fail to accomplish what they set out to do. No heirlooms? Big deal, quest and dungeon gear is just as good (minus the xp boost).
No duungeon/raid finder? This would be pretty cool in theory, but the amount of people playing on this server would (in my mind) be very low and no different from playing on a dead server before cross realm content became widespread
Most of the hype I saw surrounding Pristine Servers from people who didn’t care about Classic was because they mentioned it not having CRZ, and people have this irrationally blinding hatred of CRZ for some reason. Like don’t get me wrong it’s a little pointless most of the time but holy crap people get worked up over that, and it’s a completely different crowd than the ones who miss Classic for community reasons.
I’d be curious to see how many people actually want Pristine Realms for the -other- reasons (ie: the ones you listed).
Like you said though, the entire idea was trying to be a compromise for fans of Legacy WoW that were basically rioting at the height of their relevancy to Blizzard (because of Nost’s shutdown and the amount of attention that got).
I think now that Classic is an actual thing, Blizzard would be a lot more unwilling to split people off into these restricted realms, because the crowd they wanted to appease is now appeased.
Edit:
FWIW, I think I’d be more interested in a realm that you can’t transfer to that doesn’t have Garrison , Order Hall, BfA Mission Tables, just to see how the economy would develop, since WoD and Legion kind of irreparably destroyed it. I know that’s not a thing that would happen, and I know it would come with issues like gold sink mounts in later expansions being nearly unobtainable, I’d just be interested.
What do you guys have against dungeon finder? Does that mean you’d want battle masters again to queue for any bgs? The introduction of lfg and pvp world queue made the world much larger. You could complete quests, explore the world and still be I queue for a dungeon or battle ground.
I didn’t like that I had to sit in front of a battle Master to queue for a bg, unable to complete my dailies or regular quests.
If you don’t like it, don’t use it.
The real culprit here is phasing. How much I hate phasing. It completely ruins the world.
“Oh, boss not here, better phase!”
“Oh, getting ganked, better phase!”
“Too many alliance/Horde players in my quest area, better phase!”
Remove phasing. At the very minimum, implement some restrictions. No phasing while in combat with another player.
More difficult, less difficult, more tedious, less tedious, I don’t really care. I just want a more fulfilling experience than what we have currently.
If you like BFA, pristine servers aren’t for you so there’s no point argumenting about that. Pristine servers would basicly be old schools systems that makes the community better and that makes the game more like an actual rpg and less arcade. They would attract a community that prefers the journey to reaching goals like BFA does and try to instantly reward you all the time.
Pristine servers would basicly be servers:
-without access to bnet shop or wow token
-with slower leveling (atleast in current expansion, I think the rate for leveling in old expansions is fine)
-without heirlooms/or refer a friend
-without LFR or LFD (Basicly no port to dungeons or raids)
-without wf/titanforged/bonus sockets/bonus tertiaries
-no knowledge for ap
-no “catchup” systems for gear
-no crz or warmode (servers are either pvp or pve so they don’t crz)
-with no scaling
I don’t expect pristine servers to ever happen except maybe if they would pretty much give access for people to create custom servers of wow, which I doubt would happen.
Classic will be an interesting experience to see how much people are more interested in playing oldschool wow than actual wow. I wouldn’t take any bet on it, but I expect the first 3 months to actually be insane interesting with a lot of streamers that will give tons of views and create a lot of interest for it.
What would be the point of not having those? That would just make the game WORSE.
What does that have to do with “pristine” anyway? I always thought Pristine would just be a server that was new, with no server transfers?
I remember us having a few actual Pristine servers, rather than your idea of what they are. The problem with them was that they become “not pristine” over time. Everyone gets to max level, then they become like a regular server naturally.
And that’s fine, you would still have normal servers. It’s about having the choice.
Pristine is about “in its original condition; unspoiled.”. Lot of new systems have spoiled the game for a lot of people. Hence why they want pristine servers.
Which isn’t the point, traveling is a part of the journey to meet people on it, it’s not just about the dungeon, the dungeon is only part of the bigger world.
Maybe it was a mistake to label Pristine servers as “Hardmode”. The whole goal they should strive for is to have servers that appeal to players that want a stronger sense of community, as well as a design philosophy that emphasizes the journey as opposed to the destination, and are willing to forgo the conveniences of retail WoW to have these aspects.