Very sound reasoning and exactly what they would be doing if they had business sense and were thinking long term (10+ years), and not just the short term.
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Wotlk anniv for sure. The structure is already in place its simply a matter of making a server for it and the players will come.
+ is no-mans land imo, they are off the heals of C&D turtle wow to shutdown which was widely loved by the wow community and if they make a version that is subpar or just copy paste turtle wow its going to be a terrible image for them as either a. they don’t have the talent anymore that made original wow magical or b. cements that private server devs do a better job than blizzard devs and the blizz devs need to steal private server devs ideas to stay relevent.
Blizz really needs to shoot + out of the park honestly.
And why rush the product that will illustrate your reputation to your community when you can just make a wotlk server.
I spent a year of my teenage years inside of ICC during original WOTLK. When WOTLK classic was released I quit during ulduar, I MIGHT have suffered through to cata classic if SOD hadn’t been released. I have a good enough guild now im not worried about progging 20 year old content like we had to do when blizz made the brain dead decision to release PRE nerf content in ulduar during WOTLK classic. Those first 4-6 lockouts were just absolutely brutal.
Anyway, my point is that WOTLK anniversary doesn’t have a huge retention capability, and if they release it FIRST then some sort of “classic+” (this will just be another seasonal server by the way) it would decimate the wotlk population.
That’s not sufficient argument enough to assume they’ll release wotlk ANNIVERSARY first because we already know they will happily dumpster one project in favor of another, see SOD and MOP classic release.
There will most likely not be WOTLK anniversary. Anniversary was released with the sole purpose of going up to TBC and there has not been one mention of WOTLK at all.
Same goes for MOP classic. There has been zero mention of WoD so one can only assume that both versions will go into maintenance mode and the next shiny version of classic (classic + or whatever they call it) will happen instead.
Do you have a source for this?
Unlike the first classic release? Wasn’t classic Wrath officially announced with great fanfare around two years after classic, in the TBC cycle?
That is to say, if they didn’t announce the intention to go to wrath in advance the first time, why would they tell us this time? In fact, Blizzcon is probably the perfect time and venue to make a big Wrath announcement to go along with any classic + news.
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Yes the road map.
Yeah but anni was like their 4th time doing this.
So it makes sense they had no road map for 2019
The original classic run they never stated that an intention, just that they were launching classic.
Here is your source.
Ya I’m not sure what this whole “it’s wasn’t announced” argument is about.
- Why does it even need an announcement
- Where would they even have announced it
Normally for an announcement they don’t just drop it on us like a blue post, and for their last event it was right before tbc was even out so we weren’t even thinking about wrath we were wanting more details on tbc.
If they were going to announce it, it makes perfect sense to save it for blizzcon just as an extra time killer.
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Why would they have announced 2 expansions ahead of time? Thats wasted hype
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Why woudn’t they? You have people who love TBC and Wrath so why would you only announce “conquer the heat of Outland when these realms progress to the Burning Crusade Classic!”
99% woltk anniversary, I doudt there even be an announcement of classic plus this blizzcon
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I just said. It’s wasted hype.
Why do you think during that announcement they didn’t also mention they were working on classic +, why didn’t they mention mop moving into wod if that’s where it’s going.
There’s a reason why this next blizzcon is going to be pretty big and it’s because they withhold stuff like this.
Like let’s just say they did announce wotlk during that time. Going into blizzcon we would be thinking “well we know what’s next already so I’m not that excited for blizzcon”
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Been seeing a lot of WotLK hints recently but also you got to be serious about TripleAAA studios. How many video games release on time as intended? Also what better filler is there for a year long WoTLK while they create + and use that to unify Classic into Classic+, although I feel Van Era, HC, and maybe SoD will still be left over. Other than that + is the intended place for Classic players from the dev pov.
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Could be, but if they’re not getting all that money from selling boosts on the anniversary servers then guess where they’ll be getting it from instead?
This is why era makes sense to me, you can keep cash shop open on tbc and wotlk era realms and then you don’t need to pump a classic+ cash shop as much to meet quarterly earnings.
This is a business and they will never just give up income for nothing, I think the above is the best way to keep the majority of people happy.
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I dont think wotlk 3 is worth the hype for a blizzcon.
They for sure will announce classic+ tho and thats why it wasnt announced before hand, why would thye ever do that?
I doubt it goes to wod
That was my point, there’s no point in announcing wotlk that far in advanced because the hype is wasted.
Yes classic + is much much bigger but the thought still remains.
I doubt it does too but honestly I didn’t think it was gunna go to cata either. And there’s been “datamines” of some wod stuff on the mop realms so I would laugh real hard if they actually did that. Cata is already beyond what the “classic” game is, having it go to wod is actually just brain dead
As much as I don’t want it I definitely think Classic+ is going to have monetization in it one way or another. If its just realm xfers, boost, character remaking (changing everything but class you chose) or if goes all the way to retail style 1month gametime tokens you can put on ah and sell for irl gold and purchase cosmetics, etc. for sale its hard to say.
Era def has the best communities though imo. Would like a tbc and wrath era but only concern is Blizzard may not want Classic continuously being fragmented and may want to consolidate it in + but only time will see.
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Yep. It will also probably have token, race and faction changes to make money for classic series to help pay for C+ dev costs as well lol.
Something has to pay the bills. And looking at mop on some swing by’s…I don’t think that has service and token sales like it used to. If they announce WoD comes maybe it picks up. Tokens wiill help some cover garrison costs for sure.
If they say the 2019 journey comes to an end, that would kill sales as I see it.
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WotLK is easy money for them with boosts. BC boosts sold like crazy, and Blizzard isn’t a company that leaves money on the table when it’s that easy to make. We’ll get WotLK prepatch around December.
We’ll probably get a Classic+ announcement of some sort at Blizzcon, but I don’t see it launching until 2027 unless it’s a total rushjob. They have to do a public beta and actually test changes with the playerbase, or it will be a disaster on par the Scarlet Enclave at launch.
There’s also still way too many questions surrounding Classic+. Will they even have a budget? SoD certainly didn’t. What will be the extent of the class changes? How much new content will there actually be and what kind? How will they monetize it to justify development? If the answer is too much or too little to any of these questions, they will alienate many players on either side.
Classic+ will be a very tough balancing act for them, so they have to take their time with it. WotLK will just be drop it, make a ton of money, and forget about it.
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It almost certainly will at some point but it depends on a lot of things.
No box price for c+ and no wotlk anni would lead me to believe they’re going to have heavy monetisation on c+
I’m hoping for more of a middle ground - have wotlk anni sell level boosts and all the rest of it, have classic+ have no box price but allow realm/race/name/ maybe faction change as well. Also if they’re not going to do anything about gold sellers etc just implement the token too.
That’s my ideal but no one knows for sure which way they will go, maybe they don’t even know yet either.