I’m speculating here but I would hope there will be a big announcement for classic/era WoW where Blizzard are going to unveil one mega server that has vanilla, TBC and WLK rolled into the one server.
What is it?
Everyone plays through era/vanilla and when they reach max level or close to it they can switch to The Burning Crusade with that same character. When they reach max level in TBC they can then switch to Wrath of the Lich King. You keep a copy of your vanilla character in vanilla and a copy of your TBC character in TBC and a copy of your WLK character in WLK. This way you can switch between all three expansions on the one server.
How would it work?
Once you hit 58-60 talking to Chromie presents an option to Timewalk to TBC and talking to her while in TBC at max level gives you the option to Timewalk to WLK.
When you Timewalk the game creates a one time copy of your current character for that expansion with limits(Such as a hard cap on being able to transfer gold over which is account wide).
You can then freely talk to Chromie once that character has reach the requirement to Timewalk and switch between different timelines with the same character however your vanilla character is a separate version to your TBC and WLK version of that character and each have their own unique bank, gold and items from that point on.
Is this a smart move?
With this everyone plays on the one server and players can progress through all three expansions on the one login. Hopefully this would give players options such as being able to raid vanilla raids, TBC raids and WLK raids on the one login(e.g A guild could do MC → Kz → Naxx(10/25) in one night). It would always ensure very little segregation in terms of player pools when levelling up as everyone would level from 1-60 in era and 60-70 in TBC and 70-80 in WLK. You’ll always have a healthy playerbase no matter the version of the game you’re playing.
Having one mega server also ensures we won’t have the problem of having what is essentially alliance only servers and horde only servers.
The technology is there, we’ve had timewalking in retail for years and we’ve had the ability to house everyone on a mega server for years with the use of sharding. I believe this may be something they’ll unveil.
There might also be a few things they could do such as wipe expansions every year or provide two mega servers where one will wipe every year and the other is persistent throughout.
sounds cool, but i just don’t think blizzard would do this. they will keep it extremely simple and just re-release classic/tbc or wotlk as they were originally. Or they won’t and we’ll get WoD classic soon enough
When I read “rolled” I was thinking on some kind of progression, but here it is another post about a impossible technical feature …
What you are suggesting requires the following:
A homogeneous and normalized DB version which contains all changes from three (3) different game versions.
An unique game server which allows to “travel in time” with clones of the same character, being the character the same “entity” (same guild, same configuration, same loggin session, etc.)
An unique game client which properly “loads related time” environment and game mechanics based on the clone which you are using (as I suppose you won’t want LK talents and spells in Vanilla, or viceversa)
Take in mind that between expansions, the following items where changed:
Items, their stats and procs.
Quests and rewards.
NPCs (some dissappeared, some were moved from locations, some were added, etc.)
Game mechanics: maths, indexes, global fixed values, stats, spells, etc.
L&F: textures, 3D models, animations, etc.
Zones changes: for example Naxxramas was moved from location, or Quel’Thalas was not accesible in Vanilla.
Bug fixes.
This is not an iteration of the game, is a whole new game indeed.
Nowadays in retail, when you talk to Chromie and change your timeline, neither the client or the server changes … the DB is there, the L&F of the game is there, everything is there. The only thing you’re changing is where the game considers your character to be able to take and deliver quests. In fact, when you reach max level w/ current expansion, you’re still able to go back to those areas/contienents/expansions and do all the quests/achievements/dungeons/raids w/out any “timeline change” required.
So the technology exists, yes. But the question is: is worth to invest and develop a new whole game?
Up so far, my preddiction goes in the line of this:
Retail will still follow its path, no speculation in here.
Classic will stop at Cataclysm, I mean, even with upcoming releases and patches the game seems to be dead right now. Cataclysm was bad back in 2010 and it did provoke the first drop of player base as you can see here.
Classic ERA/HC will prevail.
Classic SoD will split into a new game client which will evolve into a Classic+ community fan-driven, and we’ll eventually face Illidan and LK but 60 level cap.
My thoughts upon reading this:
Why make things simple (new progression servers, cloning, Era servers) when you can make them complicated (what you suggest).
