I mean, the sub pays for Retail, you get free access to Classics. So in reality, Retail gets all the funding while Classics are placed on Autopilot as the last Phase is released.
There’s nothing left that has to be done.
Kingdoms of Amalur was such an exciting game 
They will definitely recreate Wrath and monetize it as much as they can. But as for Cata and onward, I don’t see official servers for those in the distant future.
The main problems of retail is its lack of communication compared to the oldest expansions, intentional roadblocking of players ability to finish the game at their pace, and the unfriendliness of endgame dungeons and raids for casual players at a high level.
Oh yeah and the main activity that any casual player can do - mog farming, primarily from old raids has been nerfed for generating gold. It’s an indirect way to monetize the game further by creating an incentive to buy WoW tokens for gold.
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Great game, also terrible leadership. I always recommend people look at what went on behind the scenes of that game. They almost bankrupt an entire state.
Did you know Amular was supposed to be an mmorpg?
Yea I can’t see them not releasing Wrath. There should be a mode in Retail to simply click one button in game and your character scales to the expansion you want to play. Players can then get their fill of old content in between current game seasons. When they run their old raid they can come back to retail to join their friends in a +15 or whatever.
See I liked most of the systems and pacing of SL. I know blasphemy to say that around here, but I like what the game has become overall. Some of the things in place were minor annoyances at best. Torghast, conduit energy, alt catch up mechanics. Sure these issues were big deal to some players. The biggest issue that dwarfs all these other issues is lack of content. If you have fresh exciting content with meaningful rewards players find less time to blow up the forums. Kind of like what I’m doing right now, ironically.
I didn’t think lack of communication was an issue this expansion. There was a noticeable effort to communicate and change glaring existing issues in game. They made regular updates and released a post on what they were doing every week. They also put themselves out there with interviews on popular content creators streams.
I think the issue runs pretty deep with how things are run behind the scenes at a corporate level. Most of the player base, including myself, could not imagine the hurdles they have to deal with internally to make good changes in a timely manner.
No they didnt.
Yes they did I was one
It was almost a 50/50 split back then now it’s like 95/5 because all the anti flyers just stopped playing as flying wow isn’t fun
flying was interesting in BC because it was new. And then they opened it to EK and Kalimdor in wrath (i think) and it was still interesting because there was a community of wall-walkers and world-exploiters (into hyjal, into COT, on top of IF, etc…) that could explore from a new perspective.
once the newness wore off, in hindsight, flying was a huge mistake.
The classic team is very small (probably less than 10 engineering staff) and isn’t diverting resources from retail in any significant way.
The ratio of cost of staff to earnings on classic is likely so good, it makes much more sense to have a small group continue to re-release old expansions, instead of those same people implementing some new system for retail which wouldn’t move the financial needle nearly as much.
What is real is classic diverting players away from retail (check out Oribos/LFD on any server for proof), but that’s expected and perhaps even intended given the current content drought. They seem to be using classic to plug gaps in retail content schedule, and that’s probably a smart thing to do.
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Well surely you don’t mean any server because Area52 might not help that argument 
No, “people” surely did. As with all things there will be some who like it and some who don’t. There was at least a few people that said flying ruined the game when it first came out (besides Brillus) so his statement is correct “people said it ruined tbc back then”.
I guess not any server! Mine (not the server of this forum alt) is noticeably a bit empty these days.
I know, some servers are certainly empty, this is another alt on Borean Tundra
Borean Tundra is one of 8 servers in a cluster, 8 whole servers are there’s only 8 people in Oribos
But that’s why I picked that realm, because it’s low pop 
Why don’t you move to Illidan? I’m sure you’re aware that place is always jam packed
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Tealar how would you know for sure. Even if it was 10 people, they could have been working on Retail. Maybe that team could have meant the difference between releasing 9.1 earlier. You have know way of knowing how little impact the Classic team has on Retail.
I do think you’re right about the cost of staff to earnings on Classic is probably very good. That is one of the only reasons why this whole thing makes sense to me.
As far as diverting players from Retail to Classic on purpose I don’t think is a smart thing to do long term for the game. We already have a split player base due to factions. Now we have players that won’t want to leave Classic Vanilla, and players that won’t want to leave TBC. Just because it may be their strategy to hold players over in between seasons, doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do. They’re dividing players, and dividing attention spans until we get to a point where the retention will be so low in the current patch that it significantly impacts the game. Players will have too many options and will just jump ship if they like flying or if they don’t or any other minor little detail.
It’s probably the best solution they have right now with WoW being as old as it is. Unfortunately, I think this will be the new norm until WoW inevitably comes to an end and is replaced by another super MMO or WoW 2.
You can forget about that ever happening, especially now with classic
Those classic players aren’t going to do anything but play classic forever, that’s a sub for Blizz forever. Now that those players have a safe maintained version (vs private) of the game they love they’ll just run Naxx 40 for the rest of their lives
You’re right, I don’t know for sure. I just basing it on interviews with the team where it sounds like a very scrappy operation, which started with a single engineer (Omar Gonzalez) experimenting with using classic assets/database in the Legion client.
I think intuitively it has to be a lot smaller than the retail team - there’s no new content to be made, so no artists, writers, designers - it would be all engineering getting the old assets/gameplay to function in the new engine.
I agree that it’s risky for retail to introduce players to classic, as they may not come back. With that said, they seem to think it’s preferable to retain a player sub within classic, than potentially lose them entirely.
If they add a token to classic eventually, then a classic player is just as valuable as a retail player financially. Of course, that completely ignores retail game health, which I agree is impacted pretty badly by classic existing, at least right now where classic is having a ‘moment’ and retail is in a drought phase.
The ongoing business model though seems to be to consider them complimentary, even though they will cannibalize the other’s playerbase at key moments, like now.
This is probably all temporary though and when 9.1/9.2/10.0 comes out and the novelty wears off TBC, the ‘tourist’ part of the playerbase will flip back to retail and classic will clear out a little.
Right… because diaper gnomes, fat humans, rats, horde night elves, alliance blood elves and glowy space goats are the pinnacle of quality.
They have the resources to pump more content out. They’re just pocketing those resources, though. It’s not a “Retail vs. Classic” debate. It’s a “Profit vs. Reinvestment” debate.
void elves are actually cool because of the void elf effect, and lightforged draneei are resskins yes, but tattoos and gold eyes make it worth it. The rest…yeah they are bad.