Why I believe we're not getting WotLK Era servers

WoW Classic Cataclysm Classic Discussion
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Blizz promised permanent servers for Era well before launch even if there was only “tens of players” on them. Prior to that Blizz had no real interest in relaunching it (let alone TBC/Wrath) and the overwhelming consensus after the ‘Wall of No (classic wow)’ collapsed was that “vanilla” wasn’t going to be popular at all and would be a ghost town inside of three months. Blizz must have had a similar mindset seeing as they were totally unprepared for the launch from a server standpoint.

I bring this up because the OP uses TBC and its impact on Era as a reason they didnt provide TBC Era servers and is likely a reason why we don’t have Wrath Era servers. While Im largely in agreement with this sentiment I would like to point out its possible we don’t have TBC and Wrath Era servers because they never planned on implementing them in the first place.

We got TBC and Wrath because of how popular the relaunch of 1.12 appeared to be and people said they would be totally down for them, not because Blizz planned to release them way in advance.

Wrath might not have been a thing if TBC Classic bombed and most stayed Era. Blizz is just riding the wave right now not operating out of a ten year plan for Classic. They;re just making it up as they go along based on what the current climate is.

But yeah, talking about Era servers for TBC and Wrath it probably would have helped if nearly everyone cloned and played both games instead of kicking Era in the family jewels on the way out the door.

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As has been discussed numerous times during vanilla classic I suspect there may be some legal issue concerning protecting blizzard intellectual property rights if the original game is always up and running.

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Saying that the cloning service/Era treatment for Vanilla was a failure is wrong.

When TBC launched, it was an expansion that was historically popular and of course players would focus on it. Era was not surprisingly dead. I cloned my toons when it was only $5/toon. It was a bit frustrating that Blizzard didn’t consolidate the population until well after. Now, it’s a good population and I am glad I have cloned toons for it.

I would have paid for TBC and WotLK clones too if the mood hit me to revisit those expansions.

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I think Blizzard is stuck in the same mindset as the playerbase as a whole, that there are Vanilla players, and Retail players with people willing to try things in between. Not realizing that there are people who would call another expansion or series of expansions their “main version” of WOW.

I think you can even see that now with people who are more comfortable with transitioning to Cata fitting in more with that WOTLK - MOP series than the Vanilla - WOTLK series.

It doesn’t seem to matter to Blizzard anyway, they’re just going to hope there’s enough of a Classic feel for the first two expansions playerbases to play Vanilla and enough of a Retail feel (or post WOTLK if you prefer to call it) feel for the progression playerbase, and hope Retail caters to all else.

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Since wrath was more popular, even on PS. That same logic should apply for wrath.

Blizz probably had to go to the ps to get the coding for vanilla and ps get to keep wrath, with blizzard not going after them.

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I have no idea what the devs are planning or thinking. Nobody does. We only know what they tell us which is usually 4/5 of sweet bugger all. But I can give you my spin on it. WOTLK is dying. player numbers are shrinking on a weekly basis. Guilds are dying. Why? Because the expansion is over. There is no new content to be had. So why the hell would Blizzard want to expend resources on a dead expansion. Classic was dead for the same reasons. So they had to being out SoM to revive interest. That might be the only hope for WOTLK. A season of WOTLK.

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That is ps do and then move the character you work on to an…era servers. So, people play what they want…really great concept. Shame a multi billion :dollar: company can’t do the same…lol

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reason 1

I will be honest. When it comes to player retention, which is laughable in my op. And if blizzard actually cared about player retention, then we wouldn’t be able to pay to be able to skip everything. The paid level boosts cause such a large retention gap. Because people pay to get up there, and get everything done in 10 minutes and then quit.

I don’t think I have played an online game with the amount of retention issues that wow has. Retail or classic. And if players find exploits and min max strategies. Why not just nerf them. Blizz handled classic so badly in my op, especially vanilla. And paid level boosts in bc were a joke. 90 percent of them were bots anyways.

  1. The spin.

I quite frankly hated SOM. And I am kind of firm on that opinion. As well as with classic plus and all that good bullcorn. I also don’t care for or have the time for hardcore classic. Leveling was the biggest obstacle in classic. But if classic proved anything to me, it proved how lazy and impatient everyone is now. But some of us just want a more permanent experience of our favorite server version of the game. Mine will always be classic wrath. More casual and easier to level. But still kind of hard at the same time.
Also not a big fan on vanilla era either. I just wanted wrath era.

3 Trophies on the wall.

Me personally, I want snapshots of my toons of wrath classic so I can log onto permanent wrath classic servers when I feel like it. The cloning service. I never wanted that for vanilla. Hence why I didn’t clone to those servers. I would instantly pay for a clone to permanent wrath classic servers for all of my toons.

  1. Prededence of bc

I still think this was a dumb decision. But if blizzard doesn’t care about protecting their own copyrigts for the burning crusade and wrath of the lich king trademarks and IPs. Fine. Because people who wanted that are now on private servers. I also don’t think this is the answer either. I also don’t think it will cause the retention issues people think it will. The reality is, the folks who want this stuff. Will just find other ways of doing it illegally anyways. And they won’t be giving money to blizzard.
At the same time, classic servers have shifted far away from the folks who truly wanted them in the first place, to a completely different audience. And I don’t think it is to much to ask for those permanent bc and permanent wrath classic servers to exist. Because, at the end of the day, now they just aren’t playing wow at all. And alot of players weren’t invested in going forward anyways. I personally would want everyone’s business. Blizzard goes on about how inclusive they are. Well, me and alot of other players no longer feel included anymore. Our playstyles. Our favorite versions of the game. We aren’t allowed to play them anymore. And I feel that trying to convince everyone that the options we have available currently is ludicrous. You can always have more options. And I am one of those folks who wants to play cata classic also on top of wrath classic. And others don’t like what wow became in cata classic. But at this rate, they are just going to lose players with cata classic as well at this point.
Blizzard wouldn’t even have the retention issues they have if they had just kept the treadmill going with better decisions going forward in the first place. They have made so many bad decisions over the years with wow in my op. And wrath was mostly perfect. But I still feel like the dungeon finder, as well as many other decisions, were just straight up terrible decisions. But wrath still had enough to keep the average player going. Since cataclysm, people have been split in a number of ways as to whether the game was fun anymore. At this point, the game is so old, and has changed so much. We might as well just have our favorite versions of the game available to us. I don’t think wow will ever get the sub counts that they used to have ever again. And each expansion now, classic or retail, has a short burst of energy and then no one is playing anymore. Litteraly. And I don’t think that would be the case to the extent as it is if blizzard had managed the game better all those years.

  1. Server cost player ratio.

I personally do not think it would cost that much for 1 bc and one classic wrath permanent era server. I don’t think it would be that bad. The biggest mistake they made with vanilla era was severely underestimating the demand. I think the demand for vanilla classic permanent era servers was high enough for at least 1 or 2 servers max. Instead, they left every single server up. Which still made no sense to me. As well as charging way to much for the cloning service to begin with.

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It’s that time of the week where Mktaar goes around and necros all the Wrath Era threads.

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How do you handhold arena “seasons” on an era server? No one ever asks that question and I am sure its difficult to answer, especially so on a server that shouldnt be monitored by the company at all or put with future updates.

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If you’re calling raid logging a retention gap then I don’t know what to tell you. People who have boosted a character most likely have plans for that character, I boosted a Paladin to 80 so that I can play it in Cataclysm. I’m not playing that character currently but will do so once Cataclysm starts.

People also boosted their character without the use of Blizzards services, dungeon boosting was very prevalent during Classic and TBC with players not seeing the outside of a dungeon only when the booster resets the instance and even then they likely just /camp for a few seconds then logged back in. When Blizzard made it so that boosting was pretty much impossible, fewer alts were made because people just generally don’t like leveling when they already have a character(s) that’s doing max level content.

Why do you dislike SoD? You don’t care for nor have the time for hardcore so that just says it right there. Reason 3 was using broard strokes to describe people, I did say never but people logging in with massive gaps of play time is just as bad that’s not how a good server community should be.

You want snapshots of your character to play at your leisure and that’s the issue and I honestly find it confusing that you don’t see how that’s bad. This is a live service game, it costs money to maintain, the progression servers make money with the expansion pass, WoW token and other services it provides but the chances of those services being used in an Era server is infinitesimal. They’d be pretty much no one buying tokens from the store, even less actually buying them from the AH. Name change will likely not be used and if there were to be server pop issues they’d make it so that you could just xfer to any server for free.

Then do it yourself instead of threatening it, do it.

Yeah, because they all stopped playing, they only wanted to preserve their characters so that they can have something to go back to when they want to play the game again. Blizzard doesn’t want Classic Era to be a money blackhole so they’re actually making something so that players will actually play some version of Classic Era in this case it’s SoD.

You’ve also stated that you’re not going to be playing Cataclysm unless WotLK Era servers are added. You’re essentially threatening Blizzard that your patronage will end unless they do what you want.

Do you even know what that would entail? Who’d run those servers, maintain them, fix bugs? You want them to add an Era server for every version of WoW? Talk about a waste of money.

This happens with pretty much all games and their expansions.

It won’t be one though, it’d be at least 2 per region which would be rougly 10

It’s how they made money for somthing that has no monetary potential.

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You’re going to be sorely disappointed when they don’t release servers for Wrath

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there will not be WOTLK era servers because they will be dead in a few months at longest

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That was my first reason.

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I mean yeah well written, though honestly I prefer tbc/vanilla/som windfury to the haste buff. That and the other factor in why so many of my friends do not want to play cata in that the timeline hints that mop and theoretically legion might replace cata.

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The way to get Blizz to consider Wrath era servers is for everyone that wants them to unsubscribe and list “No Wrath Era Servers” as reason why

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I’m hoping we don’t get a WoTLK game client. Game base is divided up enough as is.

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I am hoping we do. It isn’t like the divide is going to be that noticeable.

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Permanent WoTLK would be dead in 6 weeks, it doesn’t make sense to run servers for it. 80% of current servers are dead = why they are now merging.

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Necro-ing won’t get you what you want.