WotLK was the peak of WoW - the highest number of subscribers this game has ever seen, and then something happened. Cataclysm took this game from its peak and sent it tumbling down a mountain and that downward motion has not stopped in 6 expansions.
From Cataclysm to Shadowlands this game has hemorrhaged players. Every new expansion brings some new and exciting system that is meant to bandage that wound and breathe new life into the game, but the exact opposite happens. People get angry with new borrowed power systems, friend groups and guilds fall apart because of players quitting, and WoW becomes more and more like a full-time job than an enjoyable game.
The charm of WoW that once engulfed 12 million players has been replaced with systems and spreadsheets and instead of losing yourself in an enjoyable gaming experience you now get lost in a world of anonymity.
You are no longer known as Deuloc, you are now “that ilvl 600 warlock in the LFG list”.
Blizzard - You have all the information right in front of you. You have seen what happens when you take this game down the “retail” path. How about trying something different?
Cataclysm gives Blizzard a fantastic opportunity to re-write WoW into a whole new game. At the same time, it gives them an opportunity to give Classic WoW players a game that isn’t cursed with dungeon finder anonymity or bogged down with layers of systems.
Don’t make the same mistakes after WotLK Classic. Give us an entirely new game after we defeat the Lich King (err… Halion), but keep the Classic feel. Server communities and bonds between players matter. Don’t ruin that by adding a cross-realm dungeon/raid finder.
While I understand (and on some of your points I agree) with what you are saying, Blizzard has said in the past they aren’t going to abandon Retail.
That’s the main ship, Classic is just a side project.
They have a story to tell in Retail and they are going to keep telling it. The best you’ll get out of Classic is that they are using it to experiment with a few things and maybe taking some ideas from the past and revamping them (such as bringing back Talent Trees in some form).
I’m not saying they should abandon retail. I’m saying they should use what they have learned from retail and branch Classic off into an entirely new story/new game post-WotLK.
I’d rather them release new content phases in Classic Era. There was plenty cut from Vanilla’s release that never made its way into the game. Seeing as how Classic Era doesn’t follow retail’s path of expansions, it the perfect branch-off point for restoring that which was lost due to time constraints during original release.
You do realise that from classic launch till now the community didnt grow either right, while retail is in a downtrend rn historically it has descent oscilation, classic soo far only lost players.
Maybe wotlk bring a chinkg of it back but realistically once nostalgie fades away most are just not sticking to it and the spiral after icc will be tremendous lol.
Yeah, a bunch of people flooded in, and either “beat” Classic quickly (in whichever way beating it meant for them), or they came back for the nostalgia of it and quickly remembered how the game really was, took of their rose-colored glasses, and eventually quit.
Classic had as many active players as Retail for about a minute, then people either went back to Retail or quit entirely.
spirit of classic? it died when people started buying mage dg boosts instead of leveling lol.
I just don think OSRS is happenign around here, not saying it shouldnt but knowing blizzard they are not gonna split the development money, i mean look at how lazy SoM is, they literally made it impossible to pick lock mobs in brd because of bots lol
They’re not going to branch WC into multiple different paths and make new things for each. They’d be competing against themselves for the same market.
This isn’t accurate. If you look at the past decade blizzard has brought in more unique users to the game than ever played during WOTLK. Yes, WOTLK had peak sustained subscriber count, but tens of millions of unique players still continued to play the game for the past decade. CATA/MOP/Legion all had well over 5 million players playing the game.
Retail has been very profitable since the end of WOTLK. It’s not up until very recently that the game has started to fail.
Your idea is also bad. They don’t need to release CATA at all. They could just do WOTLK + and add new raids like the expansion never came to an end.