Hi,
What I would love is when Cataclysm launches for there to be new servers with free character transfers, but you can only transfer there with 100 gold, an empty bank, and all tradeable items in your bags are deleted on transfer.
This is the only way I can see Cata being playable for players like who have joined late. It would reset the poisoned economy that sees level 32 green items (worse than you get from quests) selling for 300g on the AH, and items at level 80 well out of reach of any non-gold-buying player.
It would reintroduce economy to the game. Players who want to buy gold won’t go there: they aren’t going to abandon their purchased gold.
It would create fresh realms for those that want to join the game, or level alts without needing to buy tokens to be remotely competitive.
Would you transfer to such a server?
As I close in on 80, I was only leveling up to be ready for Cata. I know I’m too late for WOTLK this time around. But it feels like things as simple as enchants will be beyond my reach, and the game will effectively be overrun by gold traders.
It would be optional and just for those servers, so there would be nothing to go ballistic about. If you didn’t want to go to them, you just don’t. I’m not suggesting all realms get gold wiped, that wouldn’t be fair. It would just enable people to actually play Cataclysm without the current bought-gold environment destroying it. I don’t think I can actually play Cataclysm if it’s not resolved.
In terms of the Blizzard store and WoW tokens, Blizzard don’t allow gold tokens in SoD, and they have banned GDKP. I believe they are seeing subscriptions dropping, and know that the economy in WOTLK is totally ruined (in SoD it’s ok, since nobody needs GDKP as pugs clear the raid twice a week). I think banning GDKP in SoD is (a) a test to see if it causes player drop off and (b) if it affects numbers of bots, and (c) to test their GDKP detection tools. No idea what their tools could possibly detect within current loot mechanics but I hope they work.
If you are trying to generate a non “poisoned economy”, a gold-wiped server is useless, even counterproductive, as long as bots are not being addressed effectively. The reason is, that the higher the demand for gold, the more profit for botters. The more bots there are, the more the economy gets affected by botted gold.
Botters and gold buyers do not even hold much gold. Botters usually sell as much as they can as soon as they can, while most gold buyers buy gold regularly, because they spend it soon after they bought it.
The ones who profit most from new/gold wiped servers are botters/gold sellers.
They did that for wrath. Both servers went from long queues to fully dead in under 3 months. I doubt they’ll try again.
Also, idk what you mean by unaffordable items. Most craft able ICC pieces are sub 2.5k by now. For less then 5k, you can gear our char enough to go to gammas.
And you make that how fast and at what sacrifice?
Will you have it when you are done leveling if you give up best flying or do you have to spend weeks or months doing all remaining quests and dailies to get it?
Whether something is affordable is determined by the size of the wallet
When my paladin reached 80 I had made around 6k (no epic flying). I spent around 1k of that and did some winter grasp over 2 days of irregular play and was then able to tank Gammas
You can start new character on Thekal, Jin’do or Gigantstalker if you want to. They are as good as fresh. No need to make another mistake of fresh launch, especially with Cata.
And you get another tourist attraction for 3-4 months at best. If people want to try Cata this time it is better to do on established realms.
It makes more sense to have fresh servers for cata than wotlk, with the new leveling experience it would be really cool to experience that with everyone else rather than be on a pre-established server.
and it was one of the best gaming experiences i had for 3 months, and i would do it again given the chance, just because you have an established character with lots of gold doesn’t mean everyone else is forced to play with you, also it’s not like it takes them much to just open up a new server, they do it all the time, if they won’t make fresh server for cata then i rather spend my money elsewhere.
who the hell is talking about retail? they did it for wotlk classic, and in their cata bundle they mentioned that the 80 boost won’t be usable on fresh servers, so it’s way more likely that it will happen.
I play in guild and it doesn’t bothers me how much GDKP participaters payed for their loot. I got mine via EPGP and I can rely on people I am playing with since July 2021.
most of the people that already have established characters will stick with them, some people like me would never touch cata without fresh servers so it will only increase the playerbase, besides there is already a lot of servers for wotlk, it’s not like it’s only one server that is barely surviving, they can just decrease the number of servers so that they are all healthier.
how is that related to anything i said? good for you? you can still have your guild in cata, unless they are debating about splitting up into fresh servers that is.
