I feel like as fun or exciting as releasing classic to the wow community has been, it has also acted as a double edged sword. Splitting the wow player community to retail or TBC was in essence creating a competitor without realising the ramifications of doing so.
Due to the grind in retail becoming ridiculous and the original TBC already being a grind and blizzard introducing a harsher pvp grind in TBC than the original, Players had to choose which expansion they were going to commit to. No players could really keep up on both.
If you chose retail, you would dedicate so much time and effort to a class for blizzard to nerf significantly in the next patch notes. This made it difficult to commit to a class knowing that if you did spend all that time⊠it could be wasted.
If you chose TBC, the grind was real but more entertaining however players would point out things such as population imbalances etc in which would hit deaf ears. Blizzard also changed the honor system to make it a bigger grind than it was in the original TBC, it would take months to achieve a basic gear set in order to play.
Everyone doesnât mind a little bit of a grind as it feels rewarding, but wow has felt like more of a job than an enjoyable experience. the worst part is, you feel like you are constantly met with disappointment after putting in so much effort.
I believe this game has come to a turning point and a seriously one at that, If blizzard continues to treat this game as a suck money where you can attitude, this game will fall over. customer service was removed and replaced with an FAQ, responses like âGet gudâ and all other neglect given to this game has presented this result.
making torghast a weekly exercise⊠Things like this just didnât make any sense at all. you miss one week and you are behind forever kind of scenario.
It felt like missing something like this put you at a disadvantage indefinitely.
This isnât complaint, blizzard hasnât cared for a long time but its just sad to see a game that once was⊠is in such a dire state.
The biggest disappointment with classic and crusade is Blizzardâs continued neglect of the population. The sub count is in a freefall and they continue to do nothing. They need to axe the smallest realms and give toons on them a free transfer off. We need to reduce the total realm count to match the playerbase.
People like to beg for transfers but this doesnât help if the realm count doesnât change. The fact is that there isnât enough players to fill all these realms in the first place. There never was. Blizzard stupidly made too many realms for a growth anyone could have told you was never coming.
Now Blizzard plans to make more classic realms⊠the exact opposite of what the game needs. Theyâre going to make things worse. You want fresh realms, I get it, despite how stupid and/or pointless that may be. But at least help out the original realms first. Then worry about fresh later.
I play both retail and tbc classic and I do still think that tbc classic is a better game, but it could be a fantastic game if blizzard would communicate with the players on why they wonât merge servers etc.
At least show us data if you arenât going to merge servers. Because right now blizzard is coming across as totally incompetent and detached.
I never thought Iâd care about pvp but the changes to arena rating and honor rates are a huge problem. Since there is absolutely zero to do outside of raiding (because you cant level an alt due to nobody running dungeons anymore and attunements being almost impossible now) I dabbled in pvp a bit and I played for almost 4 hours and got about 4k honor. Winning every game too.
YeahâŠtbc is in a bad spot and has a pretty dismal future if changes arenât made to pvp systems and server populations. But like retail, blizzard never makes meaningful changes for the games health. So donât expect anything here.
Just expect more paintings of women to become bowls of fruit.
As a mainly PvP oriented player, the changes to honor SUCK and turn what used to be fun into a total grind. I did some quick mental math and determined that I could earn a piece of gear every week or two from several hours of PvP per day (alliance never seems to win on my server, was 0-16 for various BGs before I gave up) to get a single piece of gear. And I donât have consistent enough time to do any raiding, so that part of the game isnât really an option⊠So basically I can level alts. Thatâs about it.
EhhhâŠthe huge expansion of server count was an overcompensation for what was originally, a horrendously naive low initial server count.
Remember how when they first announced servers, it was something likeâŠa single digit number of servers?
Anyone remember how that turned out?
The queues were insaneâŠlike, 6-8 hours long. People downloaded remote app software to start their logins early while they were at work. It was absurd.
Its not really splitting the community at all. Most of us wouldnât touch retail with a ten foot pole, the only reason Iâm subbed is to play tbc. If classic wasnât a thing Iâd probably be playing ARK right now but I could tell you for sure I wouldnât be playing Shadowlands.
itâs a team game and iâll always find a team where i can compete, even if itâs at a lower level, due to class limitations, skill limitations etc.
I actually have liked TBC over classic. TBC has given me more time to focus on my work, alts and other games while I raid with my guild. In classic I had to spend so much time farming gold and consumes that it became a big form of stress and I even hated the game for the first time in my life.
I think Blizzardâs given up due to itâs mastery season mentality. They understand EXACTLY what youâre saying, OP and they chose to ignore it because mastery seasons keep them monetizing. Not really ignoring it though, more like exploiting it.
The honor grind is the same as it always was, iâm not going to say that its good but its authentic, if anything it takes less time now because everyone has basically instant queues
A ton of folks wanted to experience (for the first or for the second time) Vanilla and TBC. The demand was clearly there for this to happen.
Sure, Blizzard made some questionable decisions and botched some things.
The players also did a great job ruining the experience, as well.
At the end of the day, this is a game and is designed for entertainment. You donât have to play⊠and you certainly donât need to play the way others tell you.
Shadowlands and retail for that matter are awful games both visually and story/lore. The game has gone 180 from what it was in Classic/TBC/WotLK.
Most players of all the classic games have one main thing in common. They like that game much much better and would never want to return to what retail is now. Ever.
What the game is experiencing now is a influx of games being added to the list of possibilities while simultaneously having tons more to do in terms of what game style you want to play now in WoW.
Retail/TBCC/Classic SoM/Classic? PvE or PvP? Horde or Ally? Timezone? Language? All factors in how we all get divided up. The problem is choices we are all given. Everyone wants more too.
They cannot make one big mega server because there are too many people with timezone issues and need to be able to communicate with each other. So we much have different realms for our different characters. You can merge the very similar ones (I support this) but itâs going to be messy and I donât know how you do that really without another massive transfer after the fact.
Most people I play TBC with havenât played retail since like WOTLK. That being the case, I donât think classic is really âcompetitionâ. Blizzardâs mistake is that they made too many servers for classic.
Thereâs been a lot of debate about that and i donât know whatâs really correct but i donât remember it being nearly as bad as it was to start TBCC. I think the cost and honor earned was somehow mixed up, probably intentionally to drive player engagement. Itâs hard to trust they care about the experience more than the bottom line these days.
