Should I Bother Returning?

WoW Classic
1

Tldr at the bottom.

I’ve been a long time wow player. Started in classic and played throughout every expansion (except cata and MoP).

I gradually lost faith in the game due to exploitative features (namely, additional purchases on top of the monthly sub). I stopped playing, but returned for classic (being a slave to nostalgia, I suppose).

Instead of #nochanges, what we got was #somechanges. Do I have a problem with cutting my accidental world-wide flight path journey short? Hell no. That’s a great QoL addition that can’t debatably affect gameplay negatively. I do, however, have an issue with transfers being prematurely implemented.

Transfers are (somewhat) a balanced issue in retail, with cross-realm capabilities causing even low pop servers to be viable. In classic? Not so much.

The server Thalnos, for example, had a mass exodus, causing it to be completely unviable. Blizzard’s solution? The onus is on the players to pay for a transfer, possibly even multiple.

I bit the bullet, I transferred. Then what happened? A massive influx of the opposite faction, combined with general toxicity (a different issue, in itself) caused another Exodus. My new server was no longer viable.

Do I want to pay every few months, an additional fee, just to be able to PvP and PvE the way originally intended? No. Do I want to keep paying a sub to a company that manufactures issues, to scrape additional cash out of the playerbase, and solves it by causing the players to pay more? No.

I’ve yet to find a game that hits the spot the same way. I’ve always enjoyed the game, but I can’t bring myself to return to such an exploitative model.

An I the only one?

Tldr: exploitative and terrible customer service / support is killing wow. I want to return, but on principle, can’t bring myself to.

2

At 50 cents a day it might be viable to be around for the opening of Wrath but, in the end, I believe classic will be an rmt fail like retail. I’m going to be around for this opening but only because my son has expressed interest. For me, classic should have been no changes, and the bots and the gold sellers/buyers aggressively persecuted. Blizz no longer cares about the game they made and the employees who did are long gone.

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I quit 13 years ago and have come back to a lot of changes.
It is what it is. My issue arethe same transfers to find friends. Or get to a server thats crap. Like now in a top5 guold on the server but how its dead. Last night I saw 10 players on and thats the first time. Ive seen that many people playing. Want to drop the guold and move server to find a better guild. $$$$ that what it all about.
But as far as returning im glad i did. Sometimes is sucks playing without friends. But it is what it is. A lot going on now that the new expansion is dropping soon.

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4

Sounds like a ‘no.’ Best wishes.

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5

Transfers are a far too destructive tool to be used casually. They are only legitimized when moving player characters off a realm that is being permanently deleted. In all other contexts transfers destroy realm communities by their effacement of server identity and complete severance of social ties. Realm Connections (Blizzard’s term for a merge) are a much healthier means to address population concerns yet require more work on the developers’ part and also aren’t a paid service.

It’s obvious Blizzard has chosen the less work for more pay option at the cost of a poorer gaming experience for its users. On principle I refuse to transfer any of my toons. I won’t legitimize their flagrant disregard for implementing a tool that should only properly be used as a last resort. If you want to return to the game and want to see changes, I would encourage you do the same. Demand better accountability on Blizzard’s part for maintaining healthy realm communities.

As an aside, I will grant that Blizzard has recently shown some initiative with regard to these issues. They performed some realm connections during the inception of Classic Era and are now in middle of a realm consolidation effort in the progression servers. Blizzard’s intent for these actions seem to be coming from the right place, but the execution needs refinement.

A major area that they are still lacking is COMMUNICATION. We need to know that they are aware and actively working on a solution for what is, without a doubt, one of the largest issues in this game: realm communities.

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