The Way Forward: How Era should operate into the future

WoW Classic WoW Classic General Discussion
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The basic premise of this proposal is a cycling reset of the three most popular Classic expansions over the course of a three year cadence, designed to accommodate all play styles with the least amount of developer hours.

Play Cycle
The cycle begins with Vanilla WoW, day one of the first year, on a brand new server which we will call Phoenix for the purpose of this proposal.

Vanilla lasts for one calendar year, adjusting loot quantities from raid bosses to scale correctly to expected quantities for that year.
Example: If MC phase lasted 6 months in Classic 2019, but only 3 months in this version, the loot slot amounts on each boss would be doubled. This same premise is repeated for TBC and Wrath.

All other game impact modifications are not considered. The version of Era to be used is the version of Era we have right now.

Server Quantities, Types, and Layers
Quick facts: There will be one server. PVP/PVE/RP-PVP will be controlled by layers in a ‘war mode’ style fashion with restrictions. Layers will be more concrete and interactive.

Quantities: Every server eventually dies and becomes one server. The realm capacities available today allows us to just start with that one server from the beginning, preventing any uprooting of communities.

Types: Server types lend themselves to server quantities, which is incompatible with a single server.

Layers: Three layer types are established: PVP, PVE, RP-PVP. RP-PVE servers have traditionally died in every instance in which they were introduced, and so PVE will hold this function within it.

A visual interface will be available in the social tab which allows you to change your layer directly. It will show how many layers are currently active and what their types are.

The user will be required to choose a ‘home’ layer, and will return to that layer when the user has been without a party for 5 minutes. Recklessly swapping layers will begin to incur cooldowns. Choosing a home layer has a severe 30 day cooldown. RP naming conventions have never once been enforced in WoW and no further comment is necessary.

End of Cycle Services
At the end of the three year cycle, all existing characters on Phoenix will be transferred to Whitemane (PVP)/Mankrik (PVE)/Deviate Delight (RP-PVP) based on your character’s home layer selection and the Phoenix server will begin anew after a two week resting period, corresponding with the end of December.

All connected era servers will be compacted into three servers: Whitemane, Mankrik, Deviate Delight.

Name reclamation services will be permanently active on these servers for any account that has been unsubbed for 30 days or more. Additionally, characters can now expire to prevent name hoarding, and will do so after 10 days if they’ve never entered the world, or 10 days + 1 day for each level it has gained, up to level 15, after which it becomes permanent. You can have no more than 12 characters on Phoenix, White/Man/Delight can still have 50 (I think?)

Variations on Ideas
Alternative idea is to have three Phoenix servers for each of the server types, dumping into the three permanent servers. I don’t think it would work well for RP-PVP though. It requires community discussion. I fully expect this contention to be worked out in the form of massive flaming in the comments below.

I pose this solution to best serve the WoW Classic enjoyers of the original base games, while shouldering the devs with very little burden after these initial developments have been made.

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Personally, I would prefer something different:

  1. Vanilla Era on the original timeline (2-2.5yrs or so). 1 year is far too compact as seen on SoM.
  2. At the end of the cycle, players will be moved back to the perma Era servers we have today. I don’t want to play on any of the realms you mentioned (I play on Grobbulus) and I don’t want them to consolidate realms. Let players have agency to choose their forever home as we have today.
  3. New cyclical vanilla server starts up and his cycle repeats forever.

I’d be happy with this personally, as I could care less about TBC or Wrath. I won’t play them. I’d be happy if they offered you them though. In that spirit I would propose:

Introduce new TBC and Wrath perma era servers. Follow the same pattern above with the cyclical nature dumping into the forever tbc/wrath era servers for those who don’t want to progress.

This would be essentially no development effort on the Blizzard team. They “just” need to stand up new TBC/Era servers, and create a cyclical fresh server scheduled every 2.5 years or so (following original timelines).

Last thing… I think it would be fun to allow players to progress from one Era to the next in a forward motion. If you get board of your current Era, walk through the dark portal, or hop on a boat to Northerend to progress your toon permanently to the next xpac. No going back though.

This last part is fluff, and I think the real move here is just cyclical servers that dump into forever era servers. No need to do anything else with server consolidation or layering.

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I honestly don’t want cycles. I want permanent Vanilla, TBC, & Wrath servers that I can leave my character on forever.

I wouldn’t mind a clone/transfer service between the three games though. Level to 60, leave a copy on Vanilla, but clone one to TBC. Level to 70, leave a copy on TBC, and clone one to Wrath. That way, depending on what friends log-in, I can play my character on any one of those games.

You’d most likely see me on TBC until my death though.

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At least 2 years per expansion.

No thanks - I love the village feel of the small PvE server. Also War-mode sometinmes bugs. Layers lead to bugs.

Where did the RP-PvE server go?

And what about HC?

I don’t feel well served by your suggestions. I rather agree with

who replied while I was AFK :wink:

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Over a 6 year time period. No 1 year diablo season expansions. 2+ year expansions or its not worth it.

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Ive often theorized we might one day see a fresh cycle from vanilla on up with the potential of getting clones and permanent servers for TBC and Wrath but now Im not so sure. A totally fresh restart is most likely but everything else players are asking for might not be on the table for Blizz. Its a wait and see game.

Looks like “Classic WoW” is gonna go to MoP and I aint even mad. Might have to dust off my 80. If they actually had the gall to go to WoD I’d say all bets are off. A restart might be years off or it might come in the form of a retail-esque classic fun server reboot of it aka Classic +.

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so… new progression servers; this is not “ERA” because you cant stay.

Era is BiS, other versions are crap.

https://imgur.com/a/ca8twlq
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Characters go to Whitemane after. They’re permanent in my solution.

Too many vanilla cycles will end up dead when you roll them back to back, as seen with SOM.

So change Deviate to Grob. Who cares, they’re both dead.

I think we generally agree that cyclical server freshes is the way forward though.

One of those offerings is available, and not very popular.

The alternative section should cover this.

They all died.

It seems to be its own animal currently, but honestly you could just open a HC wing and be fine.

Seems like a small problem. Let people transfer at the end of each expansion if they want to perma-servers of their expansion type.

Either way, the exact details can be hashed out. The fact is, this community is best served by rolling fresh servers. What we have now will eventually die.

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Still missing the point, if its a progression realm it’s not “Era” because you dont stay on that timeline and with that community indefinitely; its instead a transitory thing; its Progression.

You’re asking for progression realms, so may as well call it what it is.,

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The only changes I would like to see to classic Era are:

  1. Add Kara as a level 60 raid, make it hard af, not everyone needs to clear it. Just add weapons, rings and trinkets, no new tier gear
  2. Ban gold buyers. If Lightbringer and Nostalarius can do it so can Blizzard.
  3. Enable interfaction chats at least in battleground so we can talk crap to each other
  4. Finally a Purge day (maybe 8 hours on Sunday) with unrestricted team killing even in raids/dungeons
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Cycles is dumb for era.

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I still prefer permanent servers for the first three expansions. I like the layers idea though. These were my thoughts on it: A Future Vision of Classic (Original, TBC, and WotLK)

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This isn’t true! Naming infractions in wow are reactionary, so you can name yourself “noobkillerxx” on a RP server, but if someone reports you for character name you will end up getting flagged for a re-name.

I’m one of those RP nerds who feel strongly about names on RP servers. There’s only so many RP servers, and on classic the RP community had to be very vocal to get the RP servers we got. There’s so many regular servers where people can run around with “noobkillerxx” and the like, so I feel that if a person decides to roll on one of the few RP servers then respect the RP naming conventions. :slightly_smiling_face:

Anyway… more back on topic; I mostly support this idea! However, I’d think it’d be better to run the cycle as 1.5 - 2 years. It’s not just gear acquisition, but lvling speed and just the general vibe of classic that makes it so 1 year for all the phases would feel rushed - we experienced that with SoM.

You can see what I put in a different thread here

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107%

To break with Tradition is to break with Faith.

There is but one protocall for those who blaspheme; DEATH!

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this please :expressionless:

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please explain in detail why an ongoing cycle of seasonal vanilla is “dumb” :expressionless:

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No I dont think I will. Because its been 5 years now, and you people still dont get it. So why bother at this point?

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I am not able to remember our specific reasons - if I even read them. As your profile is hidden we cannot even go back and see what you said. So I find what you say here quite arrogant.

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Nah i dont like it. Sounds like coding nightmare especially the differnet layers with different modes like pvp and rp, sounds like a total cluster…eh mess.

I think seasonal servers on a classic-tbc-wrath cycle resetting over and over would be best. I would also add some incentives to reward top raiders for fastest clears, and achieving certain bis gear scores to give them titles, mounts and other vanity rewards they can use going into new seasons.

I would add personal loot or add a new currency that works like dkp for killing raid bosses. Loot should drop after the boss is dead and an auction interface should appear. No player can control it, they can only bid with their currency and highest bid wins.

Swipper no swipping! Hopfully.

Increase lotus spawns, add flask procs to classic, because muh consumes.

I would also just make world buffs unpurgable. I hate the wb meta but its not going away, nerds gon nerd so let them have it.

I would add some added difficulty to the raids as well just to keep it spicey. These changes are mostly for classic, as i think the tbc and wrath made lots of quality of life changes on there own.

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this is a forum for discussion :expressionless: if you aren’t going to participate in discussion, you should not post.

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