When WoW Classic started the vision and philosophy was very clear, to provide the game as close to the original version as possible.
Towards the end of Classic and as TBCC approached some notable changes to this philosophy started taking place (chrono boons, spell batching, etc). Fast forward ~10 months and even more things have been added or removed from Classic Era to match SoM or TBCC behavior.
So my question is, where is Classic Era going? What’s the official stance on what’s going to happen to Classic Era and its development? Will it be forever adopting changes from SoM and the progression servers?
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Hopefully not. Hopefully it’s Blizzard’s laziness that is causing things to spill over into CE.
CE is currently and foreseeably the dumping ground for all future Seasons once they end.
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It’s a good question.
My feeling is the further they take it from what the new original version was makes it more difficult to argue in legal matters that pirate servers are stealing their property. The closer to Retail the further from winning claims.
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That is an interesting point.
However, the old game is their IP. I’d think that copyright policies would also apply.
Eh. It’s not my field so I’m just scattershooting basically.
But the more it seems that the original form of the game is subsumed into whatever “+” direction Blizz decides to take, the more it seems to me that that original game ceases to exist opening the door for someone to take advantage.
I like the idea that it just exists, and you can continue on without the fear of having to regrind new things/expansions as there is still a lot of things to complete anyway which I doubt a lot of people ever really completed. I don’t see end game raiding as the be all and end of the game. There is no clock ticking down to “get your bis” before the expac.
I also don’t think alot of the changes should in SoM should affect classic era (eg world buffs). I can’t see any further development happening in the game but I do think there should be some things that can encourage players to play it, such as dropping the stupid cloning cost, bonus xp weekends (maybe), thrown in random new gear, etc. Could even have a more open approach to mods to have the community engage more in the development. kind of like the steam workshop.
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I can see them occasionally releasing new servers, AND toying around with alternative concepts like SoM, perhaps dumping those “alternative” servers/characters back into Era, when their preset period runs out. I know I’d love to play leveling-focused servers, maybe with tougher open-world mobs & dungeons - the “1.1 experience”.
Server population problems can be fixed more or less naturally by providing the “option” of free transfers to a HIGHER-pop realm. That way, the dead servers die off “voluntarily” - no one’s technically forcing you to lose your character name, but if you want to keep playing your old guy instead of rerolling, you have to bite the bullet and do it.
i believe classic era servers are at destination. they are whatever their community wants to make them into. All the tools for your grand adventure have been released. what will you create?
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Lol I will give you this. You are really leaning into the anti-fresh mantra.
I’m picking up heavy “Frosstfire” vibes from you though. That “You couldn’t pay me enough money to be around you” sorta vibe.
Interesting that anytime Frosstfire is gone from the forums for a bit, a new and unbearable poster suddenly pops up.
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T-shirt gnome is probably too fiscally responsible to justify a second account.
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Frrrroooooosssssssssty also doesn’t have a potty mouth.
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Back on topic:
Good question, Holsum. Kind of reminds me of [Era] Unfortunate changes/bugs leaked into Era. Unfortunately, it would seem the official response on the matter has just been to put Era on /ignore. 
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I would have expected it to be like this and, content-wise, it is at destination. It just seems like Era frequently adopts some changes in SoM and/or TBCC patches. This leads me to believe that maybe Classic Era will forever be adopting progression and SoM changes and that’s the philosophy for the new “Classic” experience.
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There are definitely things in Era that don’t belong there. As example - pvp ranking is following SOM rules in Era. Double rank points gained and double decay. So hypothetically one could now make HW from scout in 6 weeks (standing one each week and make sure to pad the pool). Ask me how I know.
Era should be following vanilla rules absolutely.
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Coming Winter 2022 to WoW Classic Era . . . Phase 7: The Emerald Dream!
Highlights Include
Fabled Mob Spawns
New Horde Playable Race - Murlok
New Alliance Playable Race - Children
Venture through the portals of the Dream Bough to discover what dire mysteries lie within!!
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Yeah it was really weird going from unranked to rank 5 in just one evening of PVP. Clearly, “Era” (I wish there was a better name), will eventually be further tainted since the plan is to dump SoM characters there.
Soul of Iron and its related mechanics and NPCs could likely be one of those candidate changes that permeate into the Era realms, I would expect. Thus, what was “classic” really becomes “enhanced edition”. Nothing wrong with all that, but it would be nice to preserve original WoW.
Something I would love to see, and maybe with Microsoft’s Azure farm and an open mind could be made possible: community realms. BioWare’s Neverwinter Nights 1 (and by extension, Neverwinter Nights 1: Enhanced Edition from Beamdog ex-Bioware) allow players to build and host their own persistent worlds. If BioWare could do it 20 years ago, and BeamDog which is much much smaller can maintain and improve upon the concept in modern times, I’m sure the Classic Team (or the main WoW Team) could give it the old Blizzard replicate success touch.
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I guess you’re right. We’ll probably never know for sure since they won’t bother anymore with Era. For now what is seems is it will simply adopt every across-the-board changes in WoW along with the other versions. I wanted to see if there was anything official on the matter.
That actually is an interesting point he made, and makes me wonder; what really is the IP here? Like most of their lore is lifted from other sources if you’re totally honest with ourselves, they have so many of the time pop culture ripoffs; may as well change the name to World of PlagiarismCraft.