The SoD-hype is absorbing all the attention. Cataclysm is a divisive topic, with many thinking that it was where WoW “died”, and others see it as the successor to TBC that WLK wasn’t. It’s not hard to find opinions expressing fondness over Cataclysm’s instanced content.
The main thing that worries me about Cata Classic is the server situation. It might seem an incredulous thing to suggest, but I would like fresh servers for Cata. Blizzard is experimenting with balanced pvp servers in SoD, and I would love to see something similar for Cata Classic.
It’s another topic that’s kind of hotly divisive, but I feel that the game without World PvP is a much lesser experience. When I say World PvP I do not mean Tarren Mill vs. Southshore, I am talking about small, random skirmishes. The threat of other players was about the only thing that made the world feel dangerous, as there is no threat in the content itself. It was the only thing that gave the server any sort of community sense back in 2011 as well (at least on my server, Ravenholdt).
So, TL;DR: the lack of information on Cataclysm is worrisome, especially when it comes to servers. Any information would be nice.
That “experiment” was just the opening of two fresh servers without any server rules. I don’t really think they need more servers than they currently have, per se. But I’d love to see one or two servers with an enforced pvp ruleset. The rest can be mega PvE grinding grounds, like the current WLK servers.
As for how they would go about this, I don’t know. I don’t think the current server situation is particularly good, and I think it is something they should try to fix. Even if it means we have to migrate to target servers in Cata.
They will probably connect servers just like the era ones as thats the only logical thing to do. You still will play on a dead realm but have other people to interact with from other realms and also see them in the world.
What I expect is a massive realm connection in clusters like Era works, but what I hope is just massive merges and keep 2 megaservers per region (1 PvP 1 PvE).
Hopefully they will at least do something like this. Just wish they would say something. Their experiments with recreating server communities really missed the mark for essentially everyone’s play experience. Honestly, having mono faction servers might be more beneficial if they can link up servers in clusters to balance the world pvp experience.
New realms would just fizzle out once the realms don’t feel fresh anymore, and people would gravitate back to their main characters on their old realms.
Gehennas/Firemaw laged rly hard on weekends at p1/p2 when players was at peak,so there is probably some engine/server limitations bypass which will worth to much hastle for bliz, game still suck at multithreading in 2024 so not much hope for big improvements.
I had fun with world pvp in early BFA. It wasn’t the same as it was back in vanilla → ~MoP (Isle of Thunder was a fun area for pvp skirmishes), but the bounty hunter system and the world pvp dailies were fun – at launch.
However, as the expansion progressed I began to like it less and less. Eventually I turned it off. I found that wherever I walked I would encounter swarms of Alliance, with few Horde about. I couldn’t really get any skirmishes, I was almost always outnumbered.
Connecting servers and adding War Mode may be among the better options they have, but I hope they put some system in place so that there’s a semblance of balance in the various shards.