When the "Full Original Run" is over, should they add new content?

[Feydark-aerie-peak]

You can’t have a game survive for 10 years without adding a single update.

We can go 3 years by going through the vanilla content first.
At that point, Blizzard can add new Classic Content or make a TBC server.
When we get to that bridge, we will cross it.

[Vharaz-kelthuzad (Vharaz)]

Yes.

The thing about vanilla is that new content doesn’t trivializes old content, as long as it’s made with vanilla philosophy.
Naxxramas doesn’t has a catchup dungeon, BWL doesn’t has a catchup heroic dungeon, etc.
Most of the time, you’re gonna have to progress through each unless you get carried.

I’d find it really hard they wouldn’t go the OSRS route.

[Fesz-cenarius]

What? Can you word it in a way that takes more than 30 IQ? That was all over the place and had no clear cut direction at all.

You seem to be complaining that legendary items will be everywhere because Classic will have a long lifespan.

I’m asking you to tell us all how adding things that were NEVER part of vanilla to Classic will shorten Classic’s lifespan and prevent those legendary items from being everywhere.

[Katerina-mannoroth]

Naxxramas doesn’t has a catchup dungeon, BWL doesn’t has a catchup heroic dungeon, etc.
Most of the time, you’re gonna have to progress through each unless you get carried.

Naxx had Tier 0.5 and “catchup gear” added to several of the (retuned) Level 60 Dungeons. Heck, Blizzard is even taking steps to ensure that gear doesn’t show up until the “Naxx Phase” as well.

[Vharaz-kelthuzad (Vharaz)]

Better gear to catchup to lower levels, not to naxx itself.
You could run forge of souls or saron for example and be icc ready easily, the “catchup” for naxx is being able to actually start raiding.

[Dealloc-dethecus (Dealloc)]

You also have to realize that Diablo 2 is a VERY small game right now. People don’t seem to want to mention that.

Yeah. It’s small. Of course it is. It’s an old game. But it’s still active. There are still people streaming it. The diehards stick around. Classic will stick around for the diehards.

From what I’m reading there’s around 15k active players in Diablo 2. That’s enough for several WoW servers. I’d expect Classic to maintain a significantly higher population than that.

[Felkros-emerald-dream]

When we get to that bridge, we will cross it.

That’s fair, I just think it is smart to discuss it before then though to make sure that it’s not a last minute thing and they freak out and add something stupid.

The thing about vanilla is that new content doesn’t trivializes old content

Most of the time, you’re gonna have to progress through each unless you get carried.

Thats the point I am trying to make, just cut or unfinished content maybe some new raids and dungeons; I’d rather see Naxxramas as the best raid gear wise, just something new to do.

You seem to be complaining that legendary items will be everywhere because Classic will have a long lifespan.

I’m asking you to tell us all how adding things that were NEVER part of vanilla to Classic will shorten Classic’s lifespan and prevent those legendary items from being everywhere.

It won’t, but seasons are not a healthy “fix” either as it will kill all old servers every single time. It has been proven countless times with games that focus on Seasons, or shifted to it like Diablo 3 later down the line.

You also have to realize that Diablo 2 is a VERY small game right now. People don’t seem to want to mention that.

Yeah. It’s small. Of course it is. It’s an old game. But it’s still active. There are still people streaming it. The diehards stick around. Classic will stick around for the diehards.

From what I’m reading there’s around 15k active players in Diablo 2. That’s enough for several WoW servers.

Yeah sure it’s enough, but why should we settle on only having .001% of what we could have? The more money Blizzard makes on honest design, the better for the player and the developer.

[Dealloc-dethecus (Dealloc)]

but why should we settle on only having .001% of what we could have?

From the player’s perspective that’s completely irrelevant. You’ll be on a server with so many thousands of players at most and you’ll never interact with anyone else even though there may be millions more players.

As for Blizzard making money; well there’s a certain crowd that wants Classic. By introducing changes you’re doing the thing they asked to not be done. I’m unconvinced that would be a good thing for the health of the game.

And another thing, J Allen Brack did say they’re perfectly fine with the population dwindling after a time.

[Feydark-aerie-peak]

That’s fair, I just think it is smart to discuss it before then though to make sure that it’s not a last minute thing and they freak out and add something stupid.

True.

Right now the general consensus is that one of three things will happen after all the Vanilla content has been released.

• More classic geared content will be added.
• A TBC server will be spun up and transfers to the server will open up.
• Classic will remain as is, much in the way private servers are today.

Which option will occur will depend on multiple factors. I expect most of these Classic players to drop after 6 months. If there are only a small portion of players left on classic servers (100k subs), Blizzard may just leave the classic servers be.

The cheapest short term solution for them is to spin up a TBC server and handle transfers. If I were to hedge a bet, this is what I think they will do.

The other option is that Blizzard might expand the Classic world to add new instances/raids. If there is enough player interest for this they might go this route. This is expensive, and would require a large player base willing to pay for it.

[Fesz-cenarius]

You seem to be complaining that legendary items will be everywhere because Classic will have a long lifespan.

I’m asking you to tell us all how adding things that were NEVER part of vanilla to Classic will shorten Classic’s lifespan and prevent those legendary items from being everywhere.

It won’t, but seasons are not a healthy “fix” either as it will kill all old servers every single time. It has been proven countless times with games that focus on Seasons, or shifted to it like Diablo 3 later down the line.

I’m not advocating “seasons” or server resets.

I’m just pointing out that adding things that were NEVER part of vanilla will not reduce the amount of time in which those legendary items are available or prevent those legendary items from eventually being more common.

I’ll ask you again to tell us all how adding things that were NEVER part of vanilla to Classic will prevent those legendary items from becoming more common.

[Vharaz-kelthuzad (Vharaz)]

I’d also like to remind everyone that this is already a proven problem in private servers.
There’s only so much you can do post naxx, people eventually drop out, private servers tried to slow this down with resets (something blizz would never do) and even then, it didn’t do much.

The server died or the playerbase went down substantially.
That is, until the next vanilla server gets people excited again and they do it all over.
It happened like this for years, over and over, sometimes same people, sometimes different, sometimes newcomers, so you end up with new servers taking the spotlight until the next one comes and now this server population goes down and the cycle repeats.

Now add the factor that they’d have to keep paying 15 a month.

[Eloraell-moon-guard]

“When”

How about we discuss it after we “start” the run.

[Felkros-emerald-dream]

but why should we settle on only having .001% of what we could have?

From the player’s perspective that’s completely irrelevant. You’ll be on a server with so many thousands of players at most and you’ll never interact with anyone else even though there may be millions more players.

I honestly hope they don’t do what private servers do with having a 10k cap, thats very toxic for the game especially for material gathering, it really sucks having every single server have a Devilsaur Mafia (something illegal on retail) etc.

As for Blizzard making money; well there’s a certain crowd that wants Classic. By introducing changes you’re doing the thing they asked to not be done. I’m unconvinced that would be a good thing for the health of the game.

J Allen Brack did say they’re perfectly fine with the population dwindling after a time.

Thats a fair standpoint.

The cheapest short term solution for them is to spin up a TBC server and handle transfers.

The other option is that Blizzard might expand the Classic world to add new instances/raids. If there is enough player interest for this they might go this route.

I wouldn’t be shocked to see them go through WotLK and never add new content. It opens it up for exploitation though with transferring gold unless there’s just a set date that everyone is copied over. Just like the PTR and betas everyone copying their characters, or if your account can only copy once just send it to your friends and have them give a cut back.

[Justan-skullcrusher]

I’m not sure that they should… BUT for the sake of argument, lets say they DO decide someday to add new content to classic.

Instead of just following TBC and the path of current WOW; i’d prefer they take a horizontal approach rather than a vertical one. Everything stays at level 60, and new abilities are added into the game via spell tomes, hidden quests, rare raid drops, etc.

Expand the world from within the current scope of the world. Make what’s there bigger, deeper, and better rather than head off to new zones every expac. Keep it all 60, and just keep it grounded like that so that all the content remains relevant forever.

[Felkros-emerald-dream]

You seem to be complaining that legendary items will be everywhere because Classic will have a long lifespan.

I’m asking you to tell us all how adding things that were NEVER part of vanilla to Classic will shorten Classic’s lifespan and prevent those legendary items from being everywhere.

It won’t, but seasons are not a healthy “fix” either as it will kill all old servers every single time. It has been proven countless times with games that focus on Seasons, or shifted to it like Diablo 3 later down the line.

I’m not advocating “seasons” or server resets.

I’m just pointing out that adding things that were NEVER part of vanilla will not reduce the amount of time in which those legendary items are available or prevent those legendary items from eventually being more common.

I’ll ask you again to tell us all how adding things that were NEVER part of vanilla to Classic will prevent those legendary items from becoming more common.

I’m not even sure how it spun into this specific discussion, haha. My bad. I don’t think the legendaries themselves will matter much at least for the first 3 years in terms of “everyone having them.”

The new content is to keep people engaged, while filling in the gaps of stuff they didn’t get to complete and release due to time; NOT adding in new stuff that wasn’t intended to be in Classic.

I’d also like to remind everyone that this is already a proven problem in private servers.
There’s only so much you can do post naxx, people eventually drop out, private servers tried to slow this down with resets (something blizz would never do) and even then, it didn’t do much.

The server died or the playerbase went down substantially.
That is, until the next vanilla server gets people excited again and they do it all over.
It happened like this for years, over and over, sometimes same people, sometimes different, sometimes newcomers, so you end up with new servers taking the spotlight until the next one comes and now this server population goes down and the cycle repeats.

Now add the factor that they’d have to keep paying 15 a month.

This is why “seasonal” design is very bad at its core, it allows you to relax and do nothing but upkeep servers; something that does not retain anyone. There are healthy ways to retain, Titanforging is NOT (I think it would be pretty unanimous to not add WF and TF to Classic).

[Katerina-mannoroth]

Which option will occur will depend on multiple factors. I expect most of these Classic players to drop after 6 months. If there are only a small portion of players left on classic servers (100k subs), Blizzard may just leave the classic servers be.

You do realize that Vanilla was launched with the expectation that it would only be able to sustain 100K players?

100K suscribers is a profitable/“sustainable” MMO, so long as you didn’t spend tens/hundreds of millions up front developing the thing. If you did that, then 100K subs is a horrible flop.

[Felkros-emerald-dream]

“When”

How about we discuss it after we “start” the run.

It’s dumb to never ask, because they will rush and add something lackluster and dumb if we wait for 3 years and ask 15 months into Naxxramas progression.

I’m not sure that they should… BUT for the sake of argument, lets say they DO decide someday to add new content to classic.

Instead of just following TBC and the path of current WOW; i’d prefer they take a horizontal approach rather than a vertical one. Everything stays at level 60, and new abilities are added into the game via spell tomes, hidden quests, rare raid drops, etc.

Expand the world from within the current scope of the world. Make what’s there bigger, deeper, and better rather than head off to new zones every expac. Keep it all 60, and just keep it grounded like that so that all the content remains relevant forever.

I want a horizontal progression too for after Naxx, not upwards. Especially level wise not going up. Adding levels immediately invalidates all of the old content and makes it feel bad to have to sit through, especially if the expansion zones are more fun. It also adds in a huge number creep because suddenly all the raid gear is invalidated in a level or two, and you still have another 8-9 levels of increase and then all the raid tiers at the new level cap.

[Katerina-mannoroth]

It also adds in a huge number creep because suddenly all the raid gear is invalidated in a level or two, and you still have another 8-9 levels of increase and then all the raid tiers at the new level cap.

Yes and no. The “huge number creep” was a design choice by the Devs in order to allow other players to “quickly catch up” to people in the Tier 3 epics before they hit the next level cap. This was probably done in part to help encourage bringing “newbs” into the new instanced dungeons as the gear disparity quickly narrowed.

To do this, they inflated the Ilvl budget allotted for gear belonging to a given level.

If you don’t deliberately inflate the ilvl budget, most of that particular problem goes away. Although it still presents a challenge for the newer players who aren’t in Naxx Epics.

[Denjac-frostmane]

Fresh Servers/Seasons are VERY toxic and allow game design to be lazy and lackluster, which makes people leave in droves over time

Yea, they leave because theres a new server of the exact same game being released. And why would you only want to experience the patches once? Don’t you want to relive that throughout the years? And if you want to stay on the previous servers then you can. People don’t just want to play through the patches one time and be done. And yes, you can just keep making alts to play through vanilla but people want to play through the patches multiple times. They can take what they’ve learned from the previous set of servers and get a really good start on the next set of servers. If you don’t want to play on fresh servers then just don’t do it. Don’t say they shouldn’t be added when no one is going to force you to reroll on them.

[Valhallann-kilrogg]

No! Never! Classic should remain a time capsule of what was once the best MMO ever made. I’m all for making TBC or WotLK “Classic” as well, as long as they’re on their own separate servers. If you want new content, there’s plenty of it in retail.