It feels like after the lengthy list of WotLK hints over the last 6 months that a return to Northrend is all but inevitable, but when exactly do we think it will come?
I’ve seen a lot of speculation that classic+ is right around the corner and will release shortly after a Blizzcon announcement in September, but I’m not sure. With the results of that c+ survey only just coming out, it seems like the team (which is presumably still quite small) will need some time to actually implement and work on everything.
With the recent hotfixes to death knight abilities coming to tbc anniversary, the data mined mounts, and the obvious “in the end, you will all serve me” lich king teaser they posted the very same day tbc anniversary launched, seems most likely to me that Blizzard will close out the OG trilogy (and possibly make era servers for the nostalgia nuts) before putting it to bed and moving on to the next chapter.
This would also allow Blizzard to keep quarterly earnings consistent as many people would be purchasing the bundles towards the end of TBC in preparation for WotLK. (I believe the classic+ survey had overwhelming dislike of cash shop implementation?)
Some have also speculated that Classic+ will be resold as a standalone game with a box price, which is also plausible, but makes me doubt even more that it’s going to release this year (no beta test etc).
Nobody knows for sure what Blizzard has cooking right now but it’s fun to speculate nonetheless, what are everyone elses thoughts?
I think something that really hurt wotlk was announcing cataclysm so early and not allowing era servers. A lot of the people in my circle (all of them eventually) went back to private servers when they announced cata as they didn’t want to invest in characters that would ultimately be forced into an expansion they didn’t enjoy.
There’s been “leaks” that blizzards new classic that they are announcing during blizzcon will start basically right after tbc.
I’ll believe it when I see it, but that’s just what people have been saying. If this classic + is as big as we are assuming it is, I think it would be kinda silly to just drop it right away. If it is actually dropping this fast that sort of worries me that this is basically just another “season” that they rushed through that will fall flat within a couple months like SoD did.
Classic+ leaks are real (as in they exist, no clue if they’re true or not), but MS/Blizz loves quarterly profits so it’s hard to believe they wouldn’t try to bank on Wrath boosts, Wrath expansion packs, and Tokens.
If they skip WOTLK, that means we probably aren’t getting TBC era, and definitely not WOTLK era. Huge miss by blizzard. I’m semi-interested in classic+, but i think my default would always be coming back to TBC/WOTLK as my forever games.
I don’t think Blizzard is capable of making another game that can hold my attention for another 20+ years, and it seems like they’re pretty set on listening to the feedback of the dwindling boomers who just want another Era.
Yeah in my mind it would make way more sense for them to turn off SOD/MOP servers, release wotlk at the end of this year, have a tbc era dump if you want it, have everyone go to wrath classic, have your ptrs/hype events for classic + starting near the second phase of wotlk, and then have classic + ready to release sometime near the end of wotlk and then have the wotlk era dump if you want it.
So at the end of all of it we have vanilla/hardcore eras, tbc era, wotlk era, and then classic +. That’s what makes sense to me but I’m sure they’ll do something dumb like they always do like leave up sod for no reason, take mop to wod even though like 5 people will be playing it, probably not make an era for the most popular expansions because (?)…and then probably have classic + be a sod 2 in disguise so at this time next year most people will probably just stop playing classic in general.
I agree with you completely. Regardless of leaks, roadmaps, blizzard inviting streamers, etc. I believe that the process you described is the most likely outcome.
Again this is just my own feeling but they learned alot with the first release of Classic servers and thays why we only got a handful of TBC servers. They’re already primed for TBC era.
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