You do know Wrath and Cata are pretty similar? WoW didn’t start with drastic changes until like Legion
That would be in like 20 years, not sure if Wow even exists then. People forget that retail also moves on and doesn’t stop at an expansion. Classic got announced in Legion and released during Bfa, thats 3 expansions ago.
Classic has no definition. Classic is the rerelease of an expansion.
Vanilla is Vanilla, TBC is TBC, Wrath is Wrath, Cata is Cata, MoP is Mop, …
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I’d say MoP and WoD when we start seeing Retail-like art and mechanics, flashy animations.
Legion is where yeah, it took a big turn and really is retail-retail.
But yeah, Cataclysm is closer to Wrath than Wrath to TBC lmao
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I agree with you on this but there is a lot of people who may have started in wrath or cata that are really looking forward to it. I see people trying to say its just about the same game which does kinda make me laugh. I do feel blizzard wants to milk this classic community for as much as they can. The problem was always going to be people were gonna want to stay at vanilla, tbc, wrath or whichever version was their favorite but i dont think that was ever really in blizzards intentions outside of vanilla. I would honestly be really surprised if they keep doing classic beyond MoP though.
And yet it’s still pretty good, all things considered. BfA is where I think the game ACTUALLY went downhill and hasn’t recovered.
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Not the same but close. This is an objective fact regardless how their feeling is about Cata. Wrath during its runtime changed so many core aspects of World of Warcraft. Introduction of hard modes, different raid sizes, faster levelling (heirloom), rdf, extensive catchup system with marks, achievements, the list goes on.
They absolutely do want to milk players lol, who wouldn’t. You have a playerbase that pays you a sub just for you to rerelease content you put 0 work into
If need is there, for sure.
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i’m definitely in the minority here, but I actually really enjoyed Shadowlands and I absolutely played played the heck out of it. All toons in were in 20s keys. Mythic prog. Covenants stuff unlocked. Almsot every mount earned.
I really think of Shadowlands Classic launches with 9.2.5 QoL, it would be a great xpac.
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I think Shadowlands was fine if you played somewhat competitive, as for someone that played at the absolute high end, covenants, korthia and torghast killed all my interest in Shadowlands.
9.0 was pretty poorly balanced. Like, horribly.
Covenant weekly locks sucked! And yeah. those who PvP’d really suffered.
But later on, all those were lifted. Gast was no longer gated. Wings were all open. Memories were 100% drop chance.
If all those 9.2.5 QoL are in the game on Day 1, it would be a much better experience.
Korthia was pretty grindy. Placing those ring sockets behind rep definitely made us all hate Korthia daily grind 
I left before any of that. I left after mythic sylvanas prog.
I got my Veilstrider achievement, but basically didn’t play Zereth Mortis. Denathrius was my last AotC I did (I started having wrist problems going into Sanctum of Domination). I also wasn’t happy with how my main spec was being handled in BfA and SL (I played BM Hunter from Legion onwards, but the Barbed Shot mechanic that replaced Dire Beast in BfA has always felt wrong to me. The spec is also regularly pushed below Surv/MM when possible, it seems)
S3 was definitely the best i gotta say. SoF was a good raid. M+ was fun too.
omg me too! My wrist was killing into late Season 2 after pushing key keys on my rogue xD
BM, iirc, wasn’t good at all the entire SL. Surv was bottom tho, until Season 3. In S3, Survival was on par with Destro locks and those rankings for M+ specifically looked like Vanilla/SoD rankings - but with Surv and Destro just being SO FAR AHEAD of everyone else.
Fun times.
It was especially bad in CN. Your pets couldn’t path to the adds on the platforms during the Sire fight, so you were automatically worse than Surv or MM (Surv could grapple to the platforms pretty easily).
How I ended up handling that fight was using Door of Shadows to the platform (I ran Venthyr all of SL, because I liked the Venthyr over Night Fae, tbh), and then would use Disengage back to the main platform. It was fairly easy to miss and fall into the pit though…
At the very least, Venthyr seemed to have a far easier time in Torghast than the other covenants, for hunter. Maybe it’s because nearly no one went Venthyr, but the anima powers for Kill Shot / Flayed Shot were super busted if you built them right.
Blizzard is going to delete wrath, just like they did with crusade, and to hell with anyone that doesn’t like it. You’ll just have to join the 2nd cataclysm unsub exodus. If it’s of any consolation, cataclysm will be quickly deserted a few months too. SOD is already dying, and that’s while being propped by wrath raid loggers. It’s not going to get any better once wrath’s players unsub.
This isn’t true at all. It’s a totally different game, and the majority hated it back then. Cataclysm’s original run had a massive unsub exodus from which the game would never really recover from.
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I am not sure there can be a linear break only good and bad expansions where some can age as people play it, it might fall down in cata, have a resurgence with mop then reach a plateau in legion classic with a possible re-invention of tbc sometime during cata or wod when there is a dropoff in players. But, this does raise the question of what expansions would one think of worthy of a possible permanent era, like why is there so little hype for cata compared to say classic legion or mop?
Is it the economy and need to farm in tbc, sod, and vanilla you mean? The leveling process which mandates interaction? The scope of the world which was BIG in vanilla, less big but still oddly fun in tbc where you could still see people farming groms for demon slaying pots, slightly smaller in wrath and really tiny in cata? Or was it something about the pre-cata raids? I mean sod is cool because like vanilla, and some other expansions the earlier games had good class identity?
When defining classic a clear definition would be the sum of a good world and community, something nostalgic but which ages well. and I really can see why the first three might age well, though the second could use some qol. But I cannot see cata aging well maybe rushed to mop, but I am going to have to disagree with you on the point of no return as mop and legion are probably more classic than cata for example.
LOL.
Wrath isn’t deleted. The progression server is getting another expansion of content. All your characters will still be there. Just like what happened with TBC Classic and Wrath Classic.
There won’t be a mass exodus. Actually some say that’s already happened. So if Wrath couldn’t even survive until Cata launches, that’s a bad sign for its success as an Era.
Cata will do just fine. There will be a spike in players at launch that will gradually subside over the years. Which is what always happens. The same will be true of MoP when that comes along.
See you in Cata!
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Like others have said, Cata is pretty similar to Wrath. So if you enjoyed Wrath you will easily enjoy Cataclysm.
I think they will keep doing expansion as long as they have decent player retention. Even with Wrath’s dwindling numbers it has pretty good raiding numbers. People are still logging in and a good chunk are probably just waiting for Cata.
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I’m very curious is to what the game you’re playing now makes it different from cata, having been playing since the beginning, I felt cata was just a wrath 2.0.
Because Cataclysm was 14 years ago.
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I don’t know why they’re so stubbornly stuck on keeping the entire playerbase moving into Cata, you don’t need 4 or 5 servers for it to be successful, all you really need is one server if that’s the population.
But there would be zero harm in having 1 TBC and 1 WOTLK server fresh for those people who prefer those eras, you’d prob only get enough for 1 server of each, and those groups would be happy and stay subbed, and the others who want Cata will go there and be happy and stay subbed. Easiest W that blizz could do.
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You don’t see it but Blizzard does. They have to spend money, not you.
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Just one person’s opinion for sure, but I know a lot of folks that feel the same way.
Are they going to keep adding expansions until this is matches “retail”? 
How is that WoW Classic?? 