This run, I hope they will launch both The Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King and stop with WOTLK, preserving the “holy trilogy” of the classic experience. However, unlike last time, they should keep dedicated servers for Vanilla (already there), BC, and WOTLK forever, so we could eventually choose to play on an era server version we prefer.
Additionally, every three years or so, they could start a fresh run that allows players to relive the progression from Vanilla to BC to WOTLK, eventually ending up on one or more of these permanent servers. These fresh runs could be seen as “fillers” for the three era servers, providing a continuous cycle of excitement and activity that funnels players toward the permanent servers over time.
People have their favirite expansion but also they will play what their friends and other play and in that case there is nothing special abou WoTLK or Cata. MoP should have really good numbers and then Legion if they push that far.
Era servers for expansions with set fresh rotation can be set, the question is what will be the eras populations.
I feel like this is what they plan to do for sure.
Altho I fear eventually all servers will be very low populated splitting community into so many expansions,
I personally would love to play trilogy even tho cata + is bs, I still would liek to progress
Idont like to stay on the same expansion
This is what I am thinking, too. They should do that, but splitting the community can be a bit dangerous. Servers may be low populated or dead. That’s why this time they announced less servers with more layers. It’s much easier to cut/expand layers then to merge realms.
When they announced this Anniversary realms, and said it will progress up to TBC, my first initial thought was it will become TBC ERA. I would love to see that, although I never played TBC and even we already have too many splits.
If that happens, I would still play ERA, with this character if they allow us to copy, but would also give a try to TBC, just to explore, have fun and to change routines from time to time.
I don’t think there are too many splits. Think about it how many “splits” were there in Vanilla? I think there were more than 90, categorized into several different realm / playstyles. So there were more than 90 splits. Now, with the mega servers, there can be a lot fewer splits and different versions of the game. Some players will return to play BC and stay there. Without it, they would not even play. So I don’t think the community will be too split. It can actually be more knitted together than in both Vanilla, BC, and WOTLK due to the much larger servers now.
I was not thinking about servers, I meant on different game versions. We already have Retail, Classic, ERA, SoD, Anniversary. A lot of newcomers get confused where to start or what to play. If you add two new versions on the top of that, TBC ERA and WotLK ERA, it can potentially couse to lose population on the current versions or split them even more.
Don’t get me wrong, would love to see more versions, especially Classic ones.