What I mean by that is: obviously, if Blizzard released a couple fresh tbc servers where you have to level up from scratch (ideally during the prepatch event, so that everyone can get to 60 in time and roll draenei/BE like they want to) then they’d be packed, because they’re literally ideal for newcomers or people like me who were mostly interested in tbc in the first place.
A LOT of us are asking for this, a lot…and usually Blizzard tends to give us a proper answer when there’s a demand that big for something. The thing that worries me this time around is that they found such an easy way to make a lot of money…that I don’t see them giving us fresh tbc servers at all. Imagine if hundreds of thousands of people…hell no, imagine if a million people end up buying a lvl 58 boost…this would mean tens of millions of dollars for them: easy money. Why would they not do it? I don’t think they really care about preserving the original experience that much.
So, what do you think? Am I being too negative or does it look like they won’t give us what we want as they don’t want to potentially lose money?
nb: again, I don’t like boosts at all. I’d much, much rather level up from scratch with you guys on a 1-70 server during the prepatch, just wanted to make that clear.
Personally i think we should have fresh (and locked for transfer) TBC servers -on top of - progressing current servers.
I think the 58 lvl boost have nothing to do with it. I am fine with allowing 58 boost on fresh servers as well as long as it’s made on a character from said fresh server.
The main point (imo) is to make sure Classic wales with 10k+ gold aquired directly (cash) or undirectly (boosting / spamming gdkp runs) through RMT do not get to play on fresh servers immediately screwing the server up.
I am pretty sure Blizz will announce fresh servers at some point. The fresh crusade on dragonfang just prooves that there us a demand for this. It’s a difficult spot for blizz to be on because they do not want to spit in the face of Classic boosters / GDKP groups.
Yes, I agree about the main problem being the economy. But in general I don’t want to join an established tbc server as a newcomer: established guilds, communities maxed out professions, bad economy, feeling left behind yada yada yada…
I would say Blizzard doesn’t fully understand/don’t believe in fresh. They may even see leaving existing character on existing realm to start from scratch on fresh as a problem and not as a feature.
It’s not about “economy” just the power level of existing population versus the rest.
Existing active players have a lot of wealth
Existing active players have a lot of characters
Existing botters have established characters and modus operandi
Existing guilds already have more players than likely needed for 2 TBC raid teams
There will be very little actual leveling at pre-patch and more inclination towards Blizzard or in-game boost.
Guilds are likely to boost their Belf and Draenei while new players don’t have such “free” support
New players and existing guilds aren’t the best match
Existing realms are on a very high gear ilvl
Existing realms are already high on population and the only option now is to roll on the empty ones… which already AFAIK have more interested that one server worth of population. And botters/wealthy can transfer there.
Most fun part of Classic vanilla was it early stage prior to mundane raidlogging reality - so you pick fresh vanilla part + fresh TBC part = more fun before it will stale (if the content progression will be slow etc.)
New realm is an option to set lower population limit or make mega and low pop limit realms.
Also botting in open world in TBC on PvP realms will be harder for bots as farming spots are more localized so there will be a limit to how much and how quickly automation can farm stuff.
Fresh realms is an option for Blizzard to skip offering a boost
Did they make new servers when TBC launched back in the day? If they did it seems pretty weird of them to not do the same when they re-launch TBC Classic.
They were periodically releasing new servers all the way up until the end of TBC, but it really wasn’t tied to the expansion launch in anyway. It was to accommodate the increasing player base. I believe a few servers even launched on the Wotlk pre-patch.
I think the biggest problem with this idea is if they allow it for TBC, they will be forced to do the same for wrath. Then you are further diluting the player base across more, and more servers every expansion. Not a good long term strategy.
TBC is considered the best or second best expansion for most of us. But do you actually remember quest designs in TBC? I mean those unending “kill 2736363 boar” quests. Yes, TBC was the worst expansion of 17 years quest designwise. It had way too much kill quests.
Then consider the server populations of the moment. And imagine those numbers will be in same area. Questing would be impossible for a long period, i mean a very long period. We will need at least 40+ layers. I dont know it is possible or not technically.
So my two cents: Opening new servers is not a choice, it will be an obligation.
And this point. This is not a reliable measure. Because vanilla-tbc transition was the highest population jump in entire wow history. Like 4x, back in time. It wont be the same now.
They did so because there was a vast population boost, and the amount of vanilla servers couldn’t handle the TBC release. If this won’t be the case now, I understand that Blizzard do not want to add more TBC servers.
Also, people who wants a more populated leveling experience, you will get it with the pre-patch. Many people will level up the new races.
They will have to open new servers come TBC, no matter what. Unless they want to lose bunch of subscribers due to poor server performance and overcrowding. The underestimated the demand massively with Classic and they are seemingly doing it now with TBC.
It is either that or they are refraining from talking about those realms, as less people would be resubscribing before those servers would be up and running. In business sense it does add up in some sense, but on the other hand talking about them now and hyping it up a bit might give them even bigger influx of subscriptions around launch.
@Melrael: This part is very tricky. You have to keep in mind that those players, who specifically want to play Classic, will not be present on TBCC realms and people like myself, who intend to play retail, Classic AND TBCC, when all three are available, are exceedingly rare (my current estimate is that this number will not exceed 20 000 people for the entire EU region). It is possible that TBCC player pool will be bigger than what we had at Classic launch, but we also now have much more space than we had at Classic launch.
It is entirely possible that Blizzard will just lock the biggest TBCC realms (or even most TBCC realms) for character creation purposes from people, who do not already have characters on them for a while and “forcefeed” such people to the four smallest current realms, which will “absorb” tens of thousands of players through layering. Once those approach full, they will unlock some of the smaller ones among the ones that rate as “Medium” and again wait until they are close to full. Given the current numbers, they can probably repeat that step a second time and then look at ones that were at lower end of “High”. If everything is still suffering from overflowing, they might consider adding a realm or two.
I am not saying the above is the only possible scenario. However, TBCC launch has to push the TBCC realms to rather extreme numbers to guarantee the need for entirely new realms. But there are other unknown variables that could throw even multiple monkey wrenches into the gears. For example… Will the player demand mirror Classic in terms of PvE / PvP split? If not, Blizzard might need to add a PvE realm or two. What is the fate of the much rarer RP and RP-PvP realms, both in terms of TBCC and Classic? Will some be added and others removed or will the split create ones that are neither too big nor too small?
@All: Many posters in other threads seem to take for granted that whatever their own view on future numbers is, it is the correct one. I am going to admit that predicting is very difficult. What I said above is just my view and it is entirely possible I missed some detail or nuance that might change things a lot. The fact remains that Blizzard has access to far more data than I do and despite that it is possible that even they might get surprised by some unexpected or hard to predict angle. We will all (including Blizzard) be at least somewhat wiser once we see how things look around pre-patch.
And suddenly people/bots will moan they are so sad they can’t play with “friends”. Locking mega-pop realms doesn’t really work and for TBC I would say even current high/medium may be “quite large” as the space is limited.
How many hours a day? Will you spend 6h daily actually playing all of that or just one more than other two?
If TBC players come to play Classic TBC (from private servers and those that were waiting for the official one) then it will be a much larger group. Also it may be that noticeable amount of TBC players will stay TBC while new WoTLK players will join for Classic WoTLK. Based on pserver data people tend to stick to their favorite expansion so aside of progressing players there will be single-version players as well. The question is - how many.
Pretty much all non-empty realms will need layering not only for launch but also to provide enough resources for all the players. Existing populations are much larger than what few zones can realistically handle. Blizzard can technically have a realm with 20k pop and 15 layers (14 for bots, 1 for humans) but is that really a good solution?
Woah… i thought you were asking for “Fresh TBC” because you wanted to feel again the “launch experience” but it look like it’s about being afraid of being “late”.
It’s all about “Classic players will have X but i won’t”. And a TBC fresh WITH 58 boost… lol.
