Probably they think about Vanila Era realm as misstake, and dont want to repeat it, 2 many favorite expansions for diff people. And not rly many people want Wotlk Era, seeing bunch of low lvl chars spaming same pointles things over and over, nothing more.
That’s true but an easy solution would be to just merge some European servers. After all people from a specific country can still have country-specific guilds. Also, I have no idea about the number of active players on Classic but I think that if there are enough to justify the maintenance of those servers I am quite sure that there would be enough for wotlk too. Worst case scenario just keep two servers for each region.
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And then people start cry about every expansion, its 2 much headache just for few people, need support it and assign some personal to check it up.
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I mean, isn’t that just the WoW experience for people who have a lot of time to play? In retail I kept doing the same stuff over and over again with multiple toons. I welcome the Cataclysm expansion because it will allow the players to do “new” stuff but we all have a favorite expansion where we don’t mind staying.
Separating pretty small community bad idea, to many versions of wow atm, and make even more its rly rly bad idea in my opinion.
And make players quit is better idea?
Having seasonal servers for TBC and Wotlk could be intresting, Alot of possibilites to do something crazy with them. but era realms for wotlk doesnt sound that great. right now i only see players raidlogging icc and leveling alts to raid icc with. The expansion is too much focused on current content. and sure that can be fun but it does make the game feel very small. and how many players do you think want to repeat the same instances they did past 1,5? if era wotlk servers becomes a reality, what you will get are low pop realms that play a small part of the entire game. and then you have the completionism community that started to grow alot during that time. and i think they would prefer new collections to go after and transmog in cata is very appealing.
So all you are left with are Raid loggers and pvp players. the world outside dalaran would be dead and goodluck trying to get a group together for previous content such as TBC raids. Right now i even struggle finding enough players for something like that.
Well right now WotLKC Era would flop misarebly. Private servers have it working because they constantly poke fresh belivers about everything being fixed, new minor features added and overall progress reseted again. So by defenition private realms are not Era, but seasons of the WotLK.
Keeping current realms as they are would bring results as Classic Era had at the start of TBCC. Most players would leave to progress further, others delusioned about endless Wrath Era realm would soon understand that most of the playerbase (as surveys suggest) moved to Cata and all they can do would be to quit, waiting for next Wrath season. They can wait it in Cata if they want to, giving expansion a second look, well at least up untill end of Firelands that is.
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Yeah few will quit, most will continue to play. Those who want wotlk era will leave pretty fast anyway, when finish gearing few chars. atleast for big break.
I don’t think the server maintenance literally is an issue, given it’s running on the same core for every version, just different config.
The client is a bit more difficult.
Ultimately, in my eyes the main risk is player count. Seen many threads over the years complaining about queue simulators. Did so myself about spamming LFG.
Blizzard is experimenting with bots, but until they become fully functional - player-like - the question is, are these servers (BC, WLK) worth playing solo?
Or, is there some other way to make sure they aren’t? Dedicating specific days to each version, for example. Would you keep subbed for once-in-two-weeks WLK PvP evenings?
It will end when Blizzard calcualtes it doesnt bring anymore money. end of topic.
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It ends when I say it ends.
WOTLK TRASH
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and now you know why they won’t. They tried that with Era and it was an unmitigated failure. Era is dead and has been since release.
Era-realms are a mistake and Vanilla-Era only exists because they are already done. SoD and Vanilla/TBC/Wotlk shares a big % of the classic playerbase.
The only thing I think it would be a great Idea its 2 years progression servers when classic reaches WoD or Legion; starting from Vanilla again, after 2 years TBC, 2 years Wotlk, 2 years Cata and so on… That probably will be the future of Classic wow. I mean they already did all the work of progressing servers just to do it once.
Maybe if SoD is successful this season and S2 (Or “Classic +”) that will be a possible future of all Classic WoW, but I dont think that Classic + would work a second time, remember SoD its just a SEASON.
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I don’t unserstand where this idea that there is a massive jump or rift between wotlk and cata comes from. Or rather, I understand why, but I think it is a misconception. Cata “update” to the old world is basically turning it into Northrend. It’s the same quest hub structure, same humour, same pop culture references. People seem to be conflating Wrath with Vanilla, when in fact Cata is just turning the Vanilla world into Wrath.
Oh and the talent trees get more rigid to invest in one tree before others? How many specs are there realistically that don’t already do that? All I could think of is Blood tank, and that is only because dancing weapon is complete crap ability. Choosing a tree and getting signature abilities for your class fantasy seems to be an objectively better system than looking up a cookie cutter build, or going down the tree where 90% of all choices arent even a choice, but just +10% damage or -15% mana used that is mandatory to get your signature ability anyway.
In short, cata is just wrath+, much like tbc is vanilla+. The two largest jumps in gameplay are for sure between tbc and wrath, where the game becomes casual-friendly, and then pandaria and warlords where the game basically becomes retail.
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That part is wrong. Legion defined current retail. The differences between Warlords of Dreanor and Legion are substantial.
The niche rogue spec for aoe with felstriker is seeing some use in certain speedrun contexts, but otherwise you’re correct.
I took a look at the specs I personally play (boomkin, resto shaman, hpal and disc priest) and compared to the wotlk talent trees in these new ones I could at least see myself making different choices for 5 man and 25 man content, which is not the case except a 2 point swap into gale winds in togc phase.
I would argue after BFA was another large jump, when they first introduced in legion and then abandoned in BFA large impact borrowed power systems.
I defer to your better judgement, I quit in Cata and played a little bit of Pandas, and it seemed very similar to cata, but with pandaren everywhere and vaguely China-inspired zones completely unrelated to old warcraft lore (Cata actually took a reasonable amount of threads from Warcraft 2).
I know somewhere between Pandaria and Shadowlands the current game turned into something entirely new. I just assumed it was in warlords because of the home base system, removal of professions and new models. I am entirely open to it being in Legion, BFA or even gradual, I wouldn’t know as my information is entirely third hand, from nobbel lore videos and the like.
I think that vibe was gradual over the next few expansions.
WOD was just very content light and had you run mission tables with your garrison multiple times a day. Legion also had that. BFA had some of that. Shadowlands had a little bit of that. Dragonflight has none of that.
Legion started a trend by having you log in daily to collect artifact power which just flat out gave you more damage and healing over time, and let you unlock extra talents over time. BFA had the same thing with Azerite and the Heart of Azeroth Level. In BFA it was more poorly recieved so they retired it for Shadowlands.
In general there’s just a lot of small things that changed between now and then, raid design is one of them, that changed at the end of MoP, with the introduction of flex (normal) and mythic difficulty, bringing the total raid difficulties to 4.
Legion saw another large move towards retail-like progression by adding Mythic+ dungeons as a second pillar of PvE progression.
interesting topic