Like I said, already have cracks on that column.
Yeah, after you said that it could very well destroy the game. That’s the fearmongering part.
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Mmmm, not necessarily. I had to articulate my thoughts for this one but I honestly believe we’ve always kind of been “seasonal”. For instance, take content patches. Those are the highs and lows of WoW. When one releases, everyone runs to do the new content, and everything’s peachy (until, you know, we find bugs that either soft or hard-lock us, quest mobs not spawning back fast enough, lag… pretty much everything wrong with Legion: Remix right now, but I digress).
So, to say the “seasonal model” was stupid means that all of WoW from the start has been a rather foolish plan. And yet, it’s survived - and sometimes - thrived from this sort of stop-and-go success.
I think the real issue is Blizzard trying to wedge and cram and stuff as much content as they can between patches. Take Legion: Remix for example: the sole purpose is to keep player attention and subscriptions after guilds had already decimated and defeated Manaforge over and over and over and… one more “over” just for good measure. This is the reason we started getting “mini raids” even after we’d defeated the big bad at the end of the expansion.
Other evergreen content to do between either patches or expansions: Pet battles (I’m so sad these are going away). Achievement hunting. Holidays! How many new, weird, completely fantastical Azerothian holidays have we gotten to fill the time between the big ones in autumn and winter and Midsummer? There’s a lot of them. Both big and micro.
And I would not agree that everything outside of what is “current” is not worth doing. For instance, I enjoy the calm and methodical pastime of pet battles. Feel free to make fun of me. I don’t find them a waste of time or not worth doing. In fact, sometimes, I stop doing “current” content because I get so bored with it. Example: I haven’t finished the K’aaresh campaign. Why? I got bored. I got a little after Chapter 3 or something to get the legendary cloak to do the raid and that was it.
As for the simplification point… that’s harder to answer. The simplification comes for those - like me - who are altoholics. And, you’ll have to forgive me for that, because I’m unfortunately part of that demographic they now appeal to. But! I do agree that we’ve lost some of the hardcore grind and “main” mentality.
I think this is part of the reason Classic was remade into it’s own server. To give the OGs that feeling of true accomplishment for having that one character that was an emotional, tumultuous investment. Because those hours of frustration from grinding, grinding, toiling away while leveling or raiding were… intense. And gratifying. But it is, I’ll admit, harder to get that these days. If that’s your thing. Me being the filthy casual I am, I still find those highs and small joys from collecting a new, cool mini pet, mount, or mog.
It’s curious to see an inconsistency in the system: Mage Tower appearances remain exclusive, while Mythic +15 appearances, originally also limited, are now permanently obtainable. This shows that “limited” content isn’t always consistent. Why the difference?
htt ps://x.com/WarcraftDevs/status/930841906048745472
htt ps://www.wowhead.com/news/mythic-15-artifact-appearances-obtainable-in-battle-for-azeroth-284580
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Not everything requires precedence. There is no precedence until there is.
And yet those with the prestige, myself included want to share it.
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Just helping out with forum level
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Doesn’t change the fact that I said both outcomes.
I want to say that I’ve genuinely changed my opinion about prestige and exclusivity after reading the critiques and comments from everyone here on the forum. I apologize if my previous opinion offended anyone. I sincerely appreciate everyone who took the time to respond and share their perspectives.
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This deserve to be it’s own OP ngl.
Doesn’t make it a good thing lol
Would be amusing if they were put on the bronze vendor for 1 million each.
$300 mountm y god.
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Prior to the introduction of LFR in 4.3 there was some progression to raiding. Most guilds didn’t go directly to ICC or ToC, they often ran Naxx or Ulduar.
While it’s not as linear as TBC’s attunement progress - you would still see people running Karazhan late into TBC. However, because gear is now reset every patch there is no purpose to running older content to gear for tougher content. All content released is intended to be completed by a random group of players with nearly no failure rate.
I personally don’t consider having multiple difficulties of the same thing content, but since Legion they’ve both cut back on the number of dungeons and number of raids as well as heavily pushed toward eliminating the gearing progression aspect since you’re expected to just replace everything.
If you played Season 1 TWW, and where 590 iLevel, that wouldn’t even be enough to run a Heroic Dungeon today. That’s insanity. It basically eliminates all the rep armor and anything that released between Season 1 and current, with the single possible exception being the DISC belt.
Gods, I’m so old. To be fair, I would have been… maybe 10? Back then? I wasn’t doing high progression. I started… late Classic, early BC because of my mum, and she was doing that stuff. I had to ask her because back then I was still piddling around in the Barrens and wanting to adopt all the kitties.
However, I do remember sort of missing the simplification of that when I was around 13 or so. 2 Modes: Normal and Heroic, then progressing via raids rather than just having tier upon tier of the same raid. I vaguely remember… Was is Legion or BfA when it got so bad that LFR gear surpassed even Mythic of the previous tier? We’re still sort of there now, actually, but I think they took their foot off the gas a little bit on that, simply because of how ridiculous the scaling has gotten.
I also do miss the variety we had in those days. If you look in the Adventurer’s Guide Book, it starts out with so many options in Classic, then just gets despairingly little each expansion. And one could say: “well, Classic was 60 levels, not just 10!” But look at Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King. They had a ton of dungeons and raids to the ratio of Cataclysm, which has… very few by comparison. And even then, it outnumbers many future expansion in that regard.
I think Renown has something to do with the “slow and steady” race to gear as well. And I do completely agree with you, the scaling and push and astronomical rise of gear is… crippling. My friend decided to duel me on his feral Druid wearing Season 2 PvP Conquest gear… I defeated him easily on my Hunter wearing only Season 3’s Honor. That shouldn’t happen. We both agreed on that.
well fomo exists because it’s tough to just unsub knowing while you arent paying attention to the game you might miss out on another cool thing. so it kind of works that’s just how they make them moneys
People didn’t let classic go, and here we are.
People who have it, want others to have it.
It won’t be.
As shown in this thread you are an extreme minority.
Countless time limited stuff has been brought back such as the fel drake. WoW is still here and wholly uneffected.
In no universe is mage tower appearances being limited a laod bearing pillar that will cause wow to collapse and cease to exist.
That’s kind of maddening to even suggest.
Microsoft isn’t paying attention. If they were, they would.
Not feeling the cracks to the load bearing from bringing back limited time things. You can point to loads of choices that causes cracks but no evidence that limtied items returning is in the top 100 causes for the cracks.
It means at least those 90% wont’ quit and wow exists as long as people pay for it.
Both.
Yeah that’s more likely to get people to quit especially combat add ons used for accesibility that blizzard will 100% drop the ball on. Players may not even want to quit but find it impossible to play because their accesibility add on was deleted.
Clearly not the case, this entire thread is proof of that.
Good.
Time limited shouldn’t exist. period. Or should always have the caveat that it will return.
It won’t be. Because it’s happened before and there is no evidence that it damaged wow.
Your suggestion has nothing to back it up. It’s as out there as “what if playable harranir will destroy the final pillar holding up wow and a week after the first one is created the servers go down forever!!!11!!!”
It’s just completely out there with no rhyme or reason let alone justification for such a “concern”.
WoW will only end when it costs more to make than it generates. Which right now would require a majority of players to permanently quit and based on the information we have available to us there is nothing to suggest allowing limited time items to return would cause such a exodus.
Things like the scarab lord, or challenge mode appearances, or mage tower appearances are all owned by a minority of the population which means even if every player with them quit when they came back there would still be enough players to sustain wow. And yet based on the data we do have available limited as that may be the majority of those with at least 1 mage tower appearance and at least 1 with ALL of them want them brought back.
The outcome is that old items come back, new people get them. Some old people who had it before complain, most don’t care either way.
That’s based on the available information we have and natural cause and effect. No prophetic abilities required.
There is no data to suggest the primary motivation for WoW players to continue playing is keep time limited items exclusive to those time periods and never coming back. As we would know if it was because of all the other time limited stuff being brought back not having a noticeable impact on population.
So “challenge mode” isn’t a term being used as all then?
Make them all the same color but one color decibel different. So close that you can only tell the difference side by side in the right lighting.
Please provide a source backing up that the return of limited time items has caused “cracks” on a “load bearing column” that is holding up wow. Any data to indicate that.
Hell I’d even take a forum post where someone is complaining about any old content being returned and it has at least 100 upvotes/people agreeing.
If you can’t even find that then there is no reason to consider it a plausible reality.
A very good change they made indeed.
Though getting to an m15 now is much harder since the squish. (not counting Lemix)
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“People didnt let this entire game mode that blizzard never said was never happening go, only that they were unwilling to do it at the time, so we’re going to use the misinformation about it to further our selfish narrative”
Fixed that for you.
If they bring them back idc my 2nd account can get them.
If they keep them exclusive cool mynmain account has all 36
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Then you wonder why your post get removed… 
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There was literally a “Wall of no” endorsed by blizzard along with a “you think you do but you don’t” but go on spreading misinformation see how that works for you.
THE WALL OF NO - REVISED AS OF JUNE 18, 2015
SUMMARY:
- Blizzard does not believe there are enough people interested in utilizing this idea long term to justify the costs necessary to bring it about.
- Blizzard feels this idea is counter to the nature of MMO’s; non-progression equates to stagnation and eventual boredom.
- Blizzard does not possess the old code. No, they did not save it as a “backup” - they might have for the launch of Cataclysm, but that was over four years and two expansions ago. Even if it were “recoverable” by other means (i.e., see “private” servers” below) it would still require lengthy and expensive rewrite, a task Blizzard denies interest in.
- They have no plans or desire to recreate the original version(s). They refer to the notion as “a logistical nightmare,”… and in keeping with #1 above the time, money and resources required are prohibitive and unjustified.
TL;DR: “Too much cost, too little interest and it’s not what the game is about… we’re not doing it.”
Proponents of “Classic” (or any other variant thereof) servers rarely put thought into the idea. This would be similar to requests for the film industry to make silent films again, or the auto industry to mass-produce Model-T cars again. Avid collectors, people who look fondly back on those days, or new folks curious about the past might take a look at them, but that wouldn’t be a high number of people in the first place - never mind the few of those who would actually pay for the experience. There’s not enough market for those, so those companies are not doing it; neither is Blizzard. That doesn’t mean there isn’t a market - just that it’s nowhere near large enough to make it worthwhile.
BLIZZARD’S STANCE ON LEGACY SERVERS:
There are many Blizzard references on the issue over the years, from many different Blizzard employees; you can read most of them in previous Walls of No. For this one, we’ll focus mostly on a recent (May 29, 2015) interview with Lore, just to keep the length of this Wall a little more bearable:
(Quotes edited for brevity)
I honestly - I think [progression servers] would be a really cool idea. It’s just like - it’s a hard sell, because it’s a whole lot of work to put one of those together, and, the idea, like… if we put all of that work into that, that means … those people are working on that instead of something else, and there’s like, a GIANT list of what those ‘something elses’ could be.
We’re talking about a time in the game’s life when night elves were considered to be the best race for leveling because they had faster corpse runs.
I think the risk with something like that is a whole lot of people go ‘yaaay yeah, no no no I totally wanna play Classic,’ and then they play for like two days, and then they go ‘Well. That’s my fill of Classic FOREVER … I remember now … this game was not NEARLY as good back then.’ laughs
Don’t get me wrong… I think there’s a lot of people that would actually be totally into it and be like ‘this is the type of game that I wanna play.’ I think there’s a number of people that would be like that. I am just… my thought is that the sort of risk of it is - is that number of people high enough to justify the cost, or are we going to like - if Blizzard were to roll something out like that - would we be putting more engineers on making this work than players who participate? chuckles
The other side of it is, if we’ve got this one developer who’s just doing nothing but this for… five years… like, what else could he have done in that time? Like, are we talking about, now there’s two or three major game features that never get added because this guy was working on that instead? It’s interesting, really, thinking about it, because it’s the sort of issue that game developers face that there really isn’t ever an answer to.
So like if you say ‘oh I’ll just hire someone else to do those other features’, like, okay, but… then we’re still faced with the question of should we have this guy working on vanilla servers? Or should we have him working on … ANOTHER new feature? Like, hiring more people just means that now there’s ten, or twenty, or forty features that never make it into the game. So. It’s an interesting sort of tradeoff.
And there almost certainly is a point at which it would make sense. In theory, anyway. … It’s just a question of - do enough people in the current playerbase want this to justify the amount of time that’s gonna be spent to putting it together?
The reality is, what would almost certainly end up happening - IF it were something that Blizzard were ever to decide, to come out with vanilla servers - would be something where they’ve said okay, NOW it’s valuable to have vanilla servers, so we’ll put ten techs on it or something, instead of having one guy sort of chipping away at it for years. Because then what happens if that guy leaves?
Blizzcon 2014 :
Do you plan to introduce classic realms?
No we do not plan to. It is too hard to maintain that many versions of the game.
THE PROBLEMS WITH PRIVATE SERVERS:
Furthermore: Some have argued that even if Blizzard didn’t keep “backups” of old code they haven’t needed or worked on for nearly five years, they could take their code from these private servers, if they so desired. There are three major problems with that.
- Most private servers are buggy in a lot of ways, because they aren’t perfect copies of the live servers back in Classic. Frequently functionality is flawed (broken quest chains – some items, achievements, mounts, etc., not obtainable); they are generally buggy and unreliable. Blizzard would have to fix such code to make it useable – an undertaking which would likely take as long and cost as much as simply rewriting it from scratch… both of which they’ve described as a “logistical nightmare” and have said they’re not going to do.
- Most private servers are altered in a lot of ways. If the devs were to take someone’s Classic server data and trust that it was up and running properly, they would risk the possibility of - just to give some examples - hidden obscene content, or hidden, functional, Martin Fury shirts. And, yes, that can happen: when Nintendo released the first Pokémon games, they were completely unaware of the existence of Mew until well after the fact. It should be obvious that Pokémon Red and Blue are far simpler games than World of Warcraft; it would only be easier to hide things like that in the sheer bulk of game code that Classic WoW would have. Again, the devs would need to spend a lot of time going over them to make sure they’re up to par.
- Not to mention that Blizzard’s stance on private servers is that they are illegal and unwelcome. This has been their stance from the very beginning. All other concerns aside, for them to simply take code from these servers would mean openly condoning the theft and illegal abuse of their property. It shouldn’t need stating here how unlikely it is for that to ever happen.
In fact, Blizzard had a recent banwave in April 2015, targeted at Twitch players who were streaming use of said servers:
I’ve read forum topic on Battle.net that Blizzard is shutting down private server streams from Twitch.
People are currently getting banned within five minutes of turning on their stream. So yeah. 
Every time blizz starts coming after these people, the community starts buzzing about Legacy servers, but they just flat out will not happen.
One of the simpler reasons is the “if you give a mouse a cookie” argument. You release classic wow servers, people are going to want BC servers. BC leads to LK, etc. etc… Every time they release a new expansion, people will eventually want a server for the old one available. Of course, no one’s going to want to go on to them after a while, but blizz won’t be able to remove them, or people will !@#$%.
They cost money to run, they cost effort to maintain. You’ll need at least one per expansion, and the thing is that they don’t draw and hold crowds large enough to justify maintaining them. Also, they detract from the current game’s market. Enough people spend their time in legacy, and when that content gets to stale for them they look back at the current model and think, eh, screw it, and quit until the nostalgia bug bites and they come back to mess around in MC/Kara/ICC for a month.
WHAT’S CHANGED SINCE CLASSIC:
In addition, very few players asking for a Classic Server have really thought through just what they’d be missing out on. Below is a list of key features introduced patch-by-patch up to the launch of Warlords of Draenor.
Burning Crusade
2.0.1 12/05/2006
- Looking for Group interface tool (not LFD)
- Pet stats scaling with their player’s stats
- Multiple characters being able to use the same HoT on the same target (more than one druid can Rejuve the same person)
- Resilience
- CC effects lasting no longer than 12 seconds max in PvP
- Honor Points as currency
- Arenas
- Hunters able to use traps in combat
- Warrior rage generation normalized with weapon speed
- Thrown weapons use durability instead of stacks
- Crafting time for equipment reduced
- Meeting Stones usable as summon stones
- Main Tank option in the Raid UI
- Display enemy cast bars
2.0.3 01/09/2007
- Pets no longer attack CC’d targets
- Pet raid frames
- Flying Mounts
2.3.0 11/13/2007
- Guild banks
- Bonus healing also giving some bonus spell damage, making solo content easier on healers
- Faction vendors giving discounts for reputation levels
- Player pets attacking enemies from behind when possible
2.3.2 01/08/2008
- Yellow question marks for completed quests on the quest givers instead of exclamation points
2.4.0 03/26/2008
- Characters retaining talented spell ranks so they don’t have to relearn the spells after retalenting
- Daily Quest limit raised to 25
2.4.3 07/16/2008
- Apprentice Riding at level 30
Wrath of the Lich King
3.0.2 10/14/2008
- Hit, Crit, and Haste no longer divided between Spell/Melee.
- Spell pushback no longer infinitely pushes a spell back.
- Spell power and healing power merged.
- Calendar feature
- Companions and Mounts changed from items; now accessible through the pet/mount tabs.
- Focus frame
- Lost tabards, pets, mounts, and keys can now be restored through vendors
- Linkable trade skills
- Improved quest sharing
- Visible timer until the PvP flag clears
- Macros and key binds saved server side
- Auto looting mail
- Druids and shaman able to use items while shape shifted
- Barber shop
3.0.8 01/21/2009
- Mounts no longer have racial restrictions within factions
- Mob tapping improved
- Corpse run speed improved
- Rep gains from monster slaying no longer deprecate compared to player level
- Chat frames able to be made Noninteractive
- Special GM chat UI
3.1.0 04/15/2009
- Dual Specialization
- Ground Mounts no longer dismissing when you enter water
- Farmable capital city reputation without just farming outdated cloth for months
- Pet taunts on raid bosses don’t affect player taunts
- Holding Alt over equipment slots to show other items for that slot
- Color blind option
- 2-hour refundable items when purchased with alternate currencies (badges, honor, etc.)
- Confirmation boxes to prevent accidental talent point placement
- Class Roles in the LFG feature
- Raid lockout warnings/escape option when entering a raid in progress
3.1.2 05/19/2009
- Equipment Manager (saving sets)
3.2.0 08/05/2009
- 2 hour “just in case” trade window for raid & dungeon loot
- Upgraded cat/bear form art
- EXP through battlegrounds
- NPCs to turn EXP gain off
- Dungeon/raid lockout extensions
- Shorter mount cast time
- Apprentice Riding at level 20
- Journeyman Riding at level 40
- Expert Riding at level 60
- Expert Riding flight speed changed to 150% instead of 60% (faster than ground mounts now!)
- Double-paned quest log for easier quest info viewing
- Uninterruptible casts now shown differently
- Druids able to see their mana bar while shape shifted
- Holding Shift to compare a piece of equipment to a currently equipped one
- Visible item level
- Vendor prices shown on items even when not currently using a vendor
- More mailboxes in the capital cities
3.3.0 12/09/2009
- Better descriptions in Character Creation
- Reduced/removed daze chances for lower level players
- Knockbacks no longer dismounting players
- Maximum character level limitations for meeting stones removed
- Taunt diminishing returns retuned and made easier
- The ability to track quest objectives on the map
- LFD & cross realm groups
- Looking for Raid interface (not the actual LFR we know now)
- Dungeon & Raid difficulty shown on the minimap
- Disenchant added next to Need or Greed in roll options
3.3.3 03/23/2010
- Random Battleground feature
- General raid buff range increased to 100 yards, from 45
3.3.5 06/22/2010
- Right clicking chat types in the chat frame to move the types to separate windows
- Battle.net accounts now friendable
Cataclysm
4.0.1 10/12/2010
- Flexible raid lockouts - you can now do a partial raid clear, then join a completely different group (assuming they’ve cleared at least as far as you had)
- No more ammo
- Auto-ranking spells
- New in-game raid frames
4.1.0 05/04/2011
- Players resurrectable through their character frame even after releasing
- Character and Target frames now unlockable/movable
- Target & Focus shown on minimap
4.2.0 06/28/2011
- Dungeon Journal
- Healing crits for 2x the heal instead of 1.5x
- Buffs no longer generate threat unless they directly cause healing or damage
- CC no longer pulls the group being Ccd
- Need rolling on a BoE binds it to you, preventing AH ninjaing
- Can no longer skin corpses already being looted or skinned by other players
- Everyone gets /roar
- Rearrangable characters on the Selection Screen
- Dismiss Pet option on unit frames
- Items turning yellow in the repair frame when under 20% durability, not when under 5 (not %).
4.3.0 11/30/2011
- LFR
- Transmog
- Void Storage
- Tank threat buffed
- Bag search
- Quest objective tracking on the minimap
- Mass raid assist checkbox
- Ability to unlearn profession specialization without unlearning the actual profession
Mists of Pandaria
5.0.4 08/28/2012
- Account wide achievements, pets, & mounts
- AoE looting
- Removal of the ranged/thrown/relic slot
- Daily quest cap removed
- Roll result frame
- Item filtering at vendors
5.0.5
- Pet Battle System
5.2.0 03/06/2013
- Tap to Faction for world bosses
- Absorb effects visible on character frames
5.3.0 05/20/2013
- Loot Specialization
- Ability to harvest nodes for reduced harvests if not at the appropriate level in their gathering profession
5.4.0 09/09/2013
- Flexible raids
5.4.2 12/10/2013
- Cross-realm mailing for BoAs
Warlords of Draenor
6.0.2 10/13/2014
- New character models
- Increased barber shop options, decreasing the need for the paid appearance change
- Premade Groups tab
- Quest items no longer taking inventory space (as often)
- Tradeskill items stacking to 200 instead of 20
- Account-wide Toy Box
- Bag cleanup
- Reagent bank
- Flexible system incorporated into non-Mythic raids going forward
- Automatic Hit & Expertise caps
- Reduced cost of rez spells
- Personal Loot
- Outline Mode
- Favorite Mounts
- Flying mounts usable as ground mounts in no-fly zones
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Nothing in the world is really lethal to tanks, possible exception - world bosses. Nothing else is. As a Guardian I can tank entire groups of elites no problem. That’s why the Mage Tower tank challenge didn’t really test the ability to survive.
In other games I’ve done raid content so difficult we took three raid nights to be able to handle the trash before the first boss and I was in the second highest guild on the server.
There can be a midpoint between the two, but there should ideally be challenging content for players that is not just a higher key of the same dungeon/raid. We’ve only been in Manaforge Omega for 2 months but at the rate of development releases we’ll still be limited to this raid for another 4 to 5.
Artificially shortening your content has some advantages, but has other drawbacks. You end up with periods of people being maxed out gear / content wise, on not just one character, but multiple and when that happens, subs drop.
There was a clear advantage to classic, and that was being able to prove damages in trademark / copyright cases. The fact they could also make money on it was a bonus.
ah so the soution is for bliz to sell MT appearances for $10 each of $360 as a bundle.