No. Next question!
This.
I play retail pretty much every day (that will change starting tomorrow), but my assessment of the community in retail is this:
1.) The reason people don’t speak at all is because of CRZ. These are literally people I will never, ever be grouped with again. In season 2 when I was M+'ing regularly and built up a pretty decent io score on both my shaman and my druid, there was more discussion with others when forming groups (groups are formed in a similar way to Vanilla–sort of–and everyone travels together to the dungeon). Even when you get to higher keys and fewer people playing, however, there is almost no chance that you will ever group with any of these folks ever again.
You do a dungeon together, you might joke a little…but there is no investment in relationship because you’ll literally never play together with any of these people ever again. CRZ is the #1 killer of social interaction in retail WoW. I’ve had a few people added to my friends list from M+, but guilds tend to just stick together because it’s the only way you get to group with the same people more than once, and that’s the only way you actually get to interact with anyone in a meaningful way.
2.) IF Classic can influence retail WoW, it will be (hopefully) that Blizzard learns by watching us in Classic…how to form the SYSTEMS in the next retail expansion.
IF they can do that–use layering to get rid of CRZ, grow some bravery and reduce the number of servers with free transfers for any losing their realm, and actually give us a means by which we could actually BE a community again…it would be a beautiful thing and extend the life of retail WoW for many years.
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They could stop any type of addon they want. All they would have to do is require addons to be signed and the client to not execute any unsigned code.
I doubt that they would go to that extreme but they could stop it if they desired.
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Yup, they’ve already stated they’re shutting down healing mods and decursive for Classic.
If they want to break a lot of other “innocent” addons, sure. I was talking about a website too though, not just an addon. Don’t be surprised when people do everything they can to make sure their BRD run goes as smoothly as possible, just like they make sure their m+ runs go as smoothly as possible. Turns out a lot of people don’t like “wasting” time.
Best way to not worry about it though is to just play with friends. That’s what I’ll be doing.
That’s an optimistic hope, but I think the core design of Retail is flawed on a fundamental level. It’s a lobby-based game for those who aren’t in elite guild circles. Vanilla WoW was designed in such a way to encourage people to collaborate with each other throughout the entire experience, but Retail does the opposite. So you’re either part of the in-group or you’re a scrub; there isn’t a substantial gray area like there was with Vanilla.
Fantastic post Meriweather. I have to give, I might give Refail a fair go if that happened.
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Sorry to quote myself, but I don’t know why I’m only thinking of this now:
They need to wipe ALL of the old retail servers…all of them. They need to start fresh and launch new ones like they’re doing with Classic–for the retail game.
Allow people some forward notice so they can clean up their accounts. I have Horde toons and I have Alliance toons, and they’re spread out all over. If Blizzard could give us a way to clean up our accounts and choose servers to transfer to in the new expansion, they could start from scratch and help the populations be communities again.
But it would take a lot of chutzpah, and it would upset a lot of people. Honestly, though, it’s the only way they’re going to get “it” back.
I mean, that’s a huge lesson from Classic right there, isn’t it? You make the servers KNOWING that you have to build them from day one to withstand potential drop-off.
If it does, I’d be happy to have you on the dark side. 
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TBH, I really don’t care what happens with BFA. I haven’t played it, suspended my accounts at the end of the last expansion. From all indications, I’m glad I did. Let retail be what it may, it will take something REALLY special to get me back there.
I’ll say it cause it at this point who cares if I get report trolled for it.
Blizzard lacks the testicular fortitude to do it.
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Who cares about retail
Classic all the way until blizzard ruins it somehow
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I have to agree. And there seems to be little in the way of honest gamer intuition guiding their decisions. That’s only a gut feeling, but some of the dumbest things they’ve done in recent years reek of focus-group metric, corporate analytic crap.
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oh gods…don’t get me started on the biases introduced from focus groups…funny thing with focus groups is you only get people who actively seek to be in focus groups, which instantly invalidates any value they might represent.
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Agreed. Either everyone here was part of that 2% or we have alot of people that don’t understand how hard it is to get 40 people working together.
They did? Where?
Even if they do change the formula for Retail I won’t be going back to it. It’s become intimidating in its scope. High max level, Sooo many expansions worth of content, ALL the achievements (which sucks if you’re a completionist). Also I always felt like I joined the party too late in retail, I would see a super cool weapon only to discover I can’t obtain it anymore, or a mount etc etc.
I’m excited for classic because it’s my favorite version of WoW, but also because its in an easy to swallow format. It’s much more approachable. Just my 2 cents!
This isn’t exclusive to retail, expect this behaviour to be prevelant for atleast awhile in classic.
The sticky discussion
probably the other way around, retail will change/has changed the culture of community and therefore classic community experience will not be the same as vanilla, which is, unfortunate, in my opinon
yah not seeing something from Blizzard saying they were shutting down healing addons and decursive. If you mean the OG versions of Healbot and Decursive, than yah, we knew that since the API was changed so that they would not work back in Vanilla .
those 2 are healing addons, don’t really need decursive if you have them.