Although I support BC era servers, I believe this is where You may be missing Blizzard’s point of view. This is of course only my suspicion as I don’t work for Blizzard, but I suspect that it is not the servers that are expensive, but rather the process of copying all the characters for transfer. In my opinion, Blizzard didn’t make enough money with character clones during Vanilla-BC transfer, and that’s why they aren’t doing it this time around.
The reason i believe it is that Blizzard is a commercial entity, if there would be money to be made from this, they’d make it.
No way. Every time a character is deleted, a “shot” of it is made, so that we can re-make it within a reasonable time. Taking this “shot” is no problem, maybe storing the data is a small problem.
Maybe this. But I think that - apart from thinking with their wallets - that Blizz wants people to go to Retail. And that they (same as some on this forums) never understood that we are quite a lot of people that would rather quit than being forced to play what we do not like.
They are really still like: “You think you do - but we know better” As can also be seen from the many big and small changes they are implementing in Classic.
I think it hurt their pride that they were so mistaken. That so many people played, and still play, Classic in one of its forms.
Interesting argument, although the snapshot for Vanilla-TBC transfer was on a much greater scale. It involved rescheduling of pvp week, disabling AH for several days etc. It still might have been expensive, more expensive than the money gained from cloning services.
The disabling of AH was not solely because of the clones, as far as I remember - something else was done as well. and only for the hindering of cheats. The resceduling of PvP I don’t know anything about, but it’s true that they had to close down the servers for longer than normal maintenance.
Maybe now/next time they know more and can make it quicker/cheaper.
My biggest concern with era servers is the longevity of such. People will quit, but who will actually start? If they were located on retail and therefore more accessible to the wider audience the average person might think to themselves “hmm, why not try out TBC, see what it was like” and just port over, not to mention that at launch this would happen en masse, significantly increasing the player base.
Plus it would be kind of cool to have all your accomplishments for each world collected on one and the same character, while still being able to go back to any of them.
But yeah, I know you are a hardcore no-changer guy, don’t worry, lol. Era servers are better than nothing, still, I personally believe there is room for WoW to evolve into something greater if something like this was done.
AH closing was done “In order to prepare our game service to be ready for both the upgrade to The Burning Crusade Classic and the availability of Classic Era realms”
And here’s the one about PVP:
KK, I remembered it as if they did something more on AH. just proves that memory is not always to be trusted.
Also an explanation for my bad memory is that I do only rarely use Ah, and PvP not at all, so this did not concern me much 
But I still hope that they can do quiockrer and/or better next time around
1 Like
This makes absolutely no sense to me. The only time they would have to copy a character would be when someone actually paid for the service in the first place. Or are you just saying that the people doing it were so few and therefore the profit too small for them to bother offering the service again?
1 Like
So they should delete servers people love,just so they can push all those people into expansion that you love?
People with personality like yours are responsible for everything that’s wrong with wow today.
3 Likes
The prime target of Era server is not people starting, but people playing the expansion they love and want to stay.
Longevity … well Era servers are still around, getting a bit more players every day so this should not be your concern.
They are at the launcher, is’nt that enough?
If you mean some kind of layre-thingie like Aßpopa, then I think that the target audience disagree with you. We wanted Classic, not some Layer-Retail-like realms.
I don’t trust Blizzard!
During the Vanilla-TBC transition all the characters, on all vanilla realms were snapshoted, in order to enable cloning. The snapshot occurred before they even enabled cloning.
Later, the players were given choice for every character snapshoted this way: do You want this particular character to be moved to the Era server, or stay on this server and progress to TBCC? There was also a cloning option, where, after making the initial choice a clone of Your character would be added to the server You did not initially chose.
It is my belief, that this snapshot, that allowed cloning was more expensive than the revenue from cloning service.
I see your point now, and you might be right. I do imagine the people that would quit with no TBC available should be quite a hit to their wallet too, though.
There is not much point in playing the expansion that you love so much if you are doing it alone, you can take the many dead realms of classic as an example. I could be wrong, but I do believe all these era servers are doomed to eventually meet this fate.
Downloading a new client and creating an entirely new character on a new realm is a much bigger commitment and leap than simply going up and talking to Chromie.
Layer and retail are such filthy words, I’d call it world porting and time travel. The way I imagine it you would talk to Chromie in the capital, you port over as a complete lvl 1 newbie and start your adventure, and when you want back you need to get to Chromie in the capital once again. I don’t think it is fair to call it retail-like since retail has nothing like this.
Good!
All these dead realms - I spek for the EU English ones only - and there’s 2 dead realms, the RP ones , rest is , if not thriving, at least playable, and very slowly growing. I think if TBCC Era server are not made, they will grow even more.
Ahh you do agree with Aßpopa’s idea of Layers. This would cater only to the Retail crew - which has by now already made up their minds if they want to try out Classic or not.
It would in my opinion be a very bad idea to make Retail players the main target audience of the Era servers, and leave all the Classic lovers out in the dark.
This way of doing it would make me quit, and I have played WoW ever since 2006. I would not play Classic if I had to download Retail to do it.
And yes if you have a PvE toon in Classic, you CAN have my gold -all 13 G
According to ironforge.pro 17/48 classic EU realms are completely dead, that should be alarming numbers to anyone.
This is catering to both sides, it is only a win-win situation. You could even have the option to originally start your character in your target expansion and never having to even see a glimpse of retail apart from maybe Chromie flipping you the bird every now and then when you walk by.
Each to their own, but I think most people would be happy with something like this.
Ironforge-pro counts raiders? I am not counted even though I play 10 h+ every week since launch 
I think Classic Era population are So done with Retail and all its doings and all its beings
And please, pretty please stop trying to make Classic into a Retail cast-off.
1 Like
I have laid out so many things for you in detail by now that you should know I am not talking about retail or classic, I am talking about something that is beyond those concepts, it is either one or the other, or both, whatever fits the player better. It is simply World of Warcraft, however you want to play it.
My guess is that it stops counting when it goes below a certain threshold because the server just becomes too irrelevant at that point. Which again, will be the fate of most, if not all servers eventually if there is no influx of new players. Being 100% purist and screaming no retail (even though you don’t have to touch retail) will not help in that regard.
Neither will making a hybrid that’s neither fowl nor fish and thus appeals to noone.
But luckily this is totally irrelevant. Before Blizz get their act together to make a such monstrosity you and I are long dead and buried. 
It’s not really a hybrid since it’s both experiences separate from each other, they are just simply accessible from one another.
I too doubt it will ever happen, and you personally seem to be fine with playing on dead servers, but most people are not and the only way to prevent that from happening is an influx of new players, if not my way, then some other way.
It’ll be Blizzard’s way by not making TBCC Era servers
I’m today registered on twitter and send message to Brian Birmingham
But next my account is banned, i think because i’m used VPN.
Text of message:
“Brian Birmingham, Hello, please save TBC ERA (open TBC ERA servers)
We created a theme on EU forum for support TBC ERA, please look
---------------------- HERE LINK ON THIS TOPIC --------------------------
Thanks.”
and next
“Save TBC ERA need for save our characters in our love expansion - The Burning Crusade. Please add option CLONE CHARACTER as it was in Classic-TBC.”
I’m dont see reply for my message i think and i’m unknown see he my message or not.
If who can please write in twitter to “Brian Birmingham” with this request with link on this topic
https://twitter.com/BrianBirming/with_replies
5 Likes