The reason why private classic +servers (turtle wow) are so popular

WoW Classic WoW Classic General Discussion
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Just a few weeks ago, I no idea really what private servers were, but after doing a whole bunch of research, here my hot take of why they are popular.

No one wants retail-lite (SOD) for a classic+ experience. Also, people want classic+, and it to be supported (updated for many years) Blizzard has always had a very bad design philosophy of make new content>move on to new content> abandon old content. If Blizzard could make a classic+ experience, and fully support it for years, with the original design philosophy while adding new raids, new zones, new content without adding a new level cap, but maybe giving extra talent points, and new gear. Also, we don’t need a million classic wows. One Era, one retail, and one classic+ not a million different versions of the game that split the player base.

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The controversy about sod and why you hear either super positive or super negative is because it shares a lot of similarities to Ascension, and that version of Asc isn’t really targeting classic/vanilla type people. I won’t go too far into it but they’ve just tried to create their own thing. You have a very different type of audience playing their main server type

Personally I think sod would have been better if the rune abilities didn’t have such absurd damage values or healing throughput. Think a lot more people would have stayed otherwise. I also think there would have been less complaints about things like pvp, where you just get insta killed in open world and are suddenly a tank in a battleground. Not realistic.

The problem (at least imo) is blizzard doesn’t have any experience with the opposite. The game (wow) itself is also not structured in a way where it’s going to feel as evergreen to something like RuneScape, which is. Blizzard has always designed the game in a theme park manner. If you make a forever theme park without leaving level 60, you end up just having gigantic power creep like you see in twow end game

They are gonna have to lean heavily into other types of progression that doesn’t include just raiding.

Professions will need to be massively expanded and upscaled. They need stuff that’s easily viable to make, and stuff that can take 100 hours worth of mats or quest chains to farm.

Some people don’t like the idea of that, but RuneScape does it perfectly

I just got done with a weapons quest on epoch that took me like 20 total hours to complete. Best weapon at this phase. It involved a crazy long chain of quests involving elites, and getting a lot of different mats and running all over the world following some RP story dialogue

They have to make stuff actually take real time investments, not just completing things in a day for the best reward.

Blacksmith could make a legendary craft that only the BS can use, and requires an absurd amount of mats (example: requires open world mats, mats from a raid, mats from elite quests, and mats that only the BS can make)

You gotta slow down progression and make the progression feel like a giant feat if you want the game to last 10+ years. If everything is too easy it’s gg from the start as in 10 years is a pipe dream.

They can add all sorts of stuff that takes an absurd amount of time without it actually annoying you too much, such as things like weapons that can be crafted one phase, and then 2 phases later, a quest becomes available for you to literally take that weapon and build upon it and upgrade it.

Phase1: sword that requires like 40 arcanite bars, thorium bars, devilsaur leather, various gems and enchanting mats. Requires mats from first raid.

Sword looks cool

Phase 3: quest appears for the owner, to upgrade weapon. Go along with RP quest chain doing stuff like dungeons for some reagents, kill X bad guy elite, take his heart to use the blood to create special mat, gather mats from p3 raid, go talk to x who wants you to kill a demon. Loot demon essence, forge sword at some special RP forge

Sword upgraded. Sword proceeds to look even cooler, is epic now, glows and maybe makes your chars eyes glow

Phase 5, quest chain unlocks to do another crazy 100 hour long chain of mats and etc. requires something insane that not everyone on the server can easily get

Weapon becomes legendary, perhaps changes your appearance like you have magical tattoos or whatever

This is the only way I see a game structured the way wow is “lasting forever”

People gotta remember if you want stuff to last forever you can’t have everything quickly and I think people don’t think about that

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The best thing SoD did, and which goes overlooked, was staggered level caps in early phases.

WoW has plenty of content on the road to 60 that is so frequently overlooked because it is inefficient for power-levelling. Runes and levelling raids aside, I think incorporating staggered level caps into the Vanilla format was a great way of breathing new life into existing assets and fighting the FOMO meta.

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I know some people liked it but level caps are just another example that the OP was pointing out that wow does every time : make content to do for a month then never again

Level caps on sod were not like 2019 PTR.

Level capping people just to make content doesn’t really make sense since it is invalidated once the cap is raised.

It’s like going through a “miniature expansion”

2019 level caps were more sandbox as there was no clear defined thing to do at the cap.

You can just not have caps and add new dungeons that do not require a raid to do and people will still do them. Dragon maw retreat from turtle wow as an example. People are gonna do 5 mans on alts and etc but having to form a raid makes it less likely for alts to do outside of a cap.

Not that the level caps were all bad or anything, there were some good stuff added in between. It just depends on how you look at it though.

There’s plenty of stuff to do at low levels without needing a cap. As long as it’s not a chore like requiring a raid to do then it’ll be ran at any level on the way up. If they do a classic+ and then cap you at level 25 for a raid that stuff will never be done again 2 phases later and will be totally forgotten

I also just don’t like the idea of not having my talent points due to cap. People want to play their class and have their abilities.

People might not like this take but you could actually extend the leveling process, extend professions, add to dungeons making them longer and add new zones and I don’t think people would complain about longer leveling as long as they aren’t hard capped on progress

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Strange how vanilla enjoyers actually get it and can at the same time see the problems vanilla has.

Saddest part is how much better vanilla is than other versions. Biggest mistake IMO blizzard made with the SoD game was the massive gear power factor and class skills added that tremendously increased power factors.

So little is needed to refine “vanilla” yet every time you discuss class updates you get flooded with players who are power gamers all wanting to be playing their class yet also want to be outperforming Naxx tier warriors that have full WB’s and consumes and optimal comp… Meanwhile being a hybrid or something, while in dungeon loot without any WB’s … They can’t fathom how this is bricks the game and telefrags PvP.

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old fallacy. More choices lead to more people playing and for longer time.

Te reason Pservers are good (for some) is that they have developers actually playing the game, who makes a game they like not looking at the economical bottom line.

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I agree that staggered level gaps were a stop-gap, not a solution. But I still think they were a well-executed stop-gap.

I do like the take of expanding the profession system, and in theory the idea of more levelling content. However, I have no faith in the player base to not immediately go back to whatever provides the most experience per hour.

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Yeah like I said, I don’t think they are inherently bad, just that there’s 2 sides to the coin.

I love what they’ve done with proffs on epoch. There’s actual stuff to make at low levels that are actually bis and useful and sellable. A lot of it isn’t even super hard to make, but classic+ could go all out with proffs and make them incredibly deep and expanded like RuneScape does, essentially making them a mid game and even end game grind. You could even as I said, stretch out special crafted items over the course of phases, where they can be upgraded. Each upgrade requires more and more time, investment, and super niche resources.

Professions have so much potential that they can range anywhere from low level bis worth going out of your way to make, to the usual stuff like arcanite reaper, only later on, 2 phases later, the blacksmith has an option to take his crafted weapon down a special, epic path

Imagine making arcanite reaper at level 60. In phase 3, a quest opens up

You can take the weapon down 3 paths:

The Fel route
The Grove route
The “dark iron” route etc

Fel route locks the weapon down this path to be expanded on as the game goes on. Fel path imbues the weapon with demonic power from RP felsmiths, powered by demonic mats or runes

The grove path is similar and more Nelf or Troll in theme. Granting bonuses stats and benefits or procs based on that factions magic/lore type and also changes the appearance of the weapon

Dark iron same thing

All paths provide different bonuses and looks and you cannot change paths

Think legion artifact weapons but not so powerful you won’t use other weapons and no artifact power

If there are enough profession options in game like this, you won’t have a scenario like you see now in anniversary, where every melee just has r14 weapons or whatever, or warriors won’t have to pray BRE drops every raid, or whatever

Also having diff appearances does the same thing

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Kind of disagree. The level gaps were a great idea but, because they were using them to buy time to develop, they ran too long. They lost control of phase timing in SoD

Phase 3 was where the system fell down extremely hard. Phase 4 was not ready, and Cataclysm launch took dev resources away, that caused a massive drop off in players in SoD as people got sick of running sunken temple @ level 50 for 12 weeks

That was very bad execution, IMO, and it hurt SoD long term, even though the idea was good overall

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Was about to say something similar and you beat me to it. It’s wild to me how much content WoW, as a whole, generates and then throws away. Say what you will about retail but there have been some truy great raids over the years that anybody who didn’t play that expansion will never experience.

I have no idea whether or not the SoD level raids were any good because I wasn’t able to play SoD during that time… and now I will never know.

Ego ruins us all. It’s too easy to lose sight of the broader perspective and focus in on how OP our class should be simply because we play it. I think that’s the mark of a truly great designer, one who can see the whole and not the individual.

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It’s because they’re free.

That’s why they are popular.

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I play one now cause it’s more fun than blizzards. I’m even still subbed to blizzard

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I dont think that was an issue with staggered level caps per se, but the concurrent implementation of new content with each phase.

There’s plenty to do in Vanilla WoW 1-60. Counter-intuitively, SoD’s new content made a lot of it irrelevant. Why would you dungeon or rep grind to get your BiS within that level range, when you can farm incursions and raid-log for massive XP and overpowered items?

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To be fair, private servers give players what they want, unlike Blizzard whom makes excuses and takes ages to add anything, and then only does so grudgingly.

TWoW gives players Classic WoW, expanded. New zones, new quests, new races, etc… I mean, High Elves on the Alliance have been a request for ages, and TWoW just did the easy thing and added them to the Alliance. No fuss. I can’t speak to the quality of their addition (I’ve heard the High Elf stuff used to be more original, but then they just added Lor’themar and Rommath and Halduron), but its there.

Blizzard is so focused on being profitable that they’re blind to what the players want. Would they ever add lower level questing zones? Absolutely not.

That Classic+ survey that floated around a while ago was intriguing, but I seriously doubt anything will come of it. Too many resources for not enough of a guaranteed profit.