Its SoM 2.0
You focus too much on changes instead of adding new stuff. New zones, raids, classes, dungeons, quests, battlegrounds…
Molten Core with difficulties? Sure? Like who cares. Where is Karazhan Crypts Where is Scarlet Citadel, Hyjal, Azshara Crater. Where is the interesting stuff that makes people hyped? So many missed opportunities. Wake up Blizzard.
That is your interpretation of “classic+”. Many players enjoy the fact that more classes and specs actually work in SoD than in vanilla. I highly doubt another round of warriors being the only viable class, but with a few more dungeons / raids would draw that many players.
Nope it’s not. SoD stopped being SoD with p2 when they dropped the ball. When they stopped with the promised involvement / balance passes for pve.
As for now: too much work for not enough subs / interest. That can’t be profitable. There is not even token / cash shop there. That would not fly with management.
Without going on the typical tirade about the shop and stuff like that, this is a valid question. Is there any profit to be made developing new raids, zones and so on for vanilla? It certainly costs money to make, but what kind of return on their investment could they expect making a product like OP suggests? Blizzard is not a charity after all.
Yeah exactly. New content requires a lot of resources. Might have happened if they did only Retail / SoD but Cataclysm tok the cake i am afraid.
They never ever said it was going to be classic+
Hehe yeah let me spoil you: New content is what makes a game profitable and keeps people interest, its not my interpretation lil bro, its a fact. My point is not to stop balance, but to get both, content and balance, mindblowing right?
Uh well, your free to assume it can’t be profitable but there’s no reason to do so. Another spoiler: Classic is one of most profitable versions in terms of subs and popularity in recent years. In fact, its reasonable to assume it’d be even more profitable than developing content for Retail
Being a bit contradictory there, aren’t we? Not to mention that the latter is laughably false.
It’s reasonable to assume you never have, nor will you ever, be in a position to determine what is profitable for a business of any size.
Ask the developers of milking series like CoD, FIFA and other games that come out every 1-2 years with very little change to the core concept.
If Blizzard invested in content that both drew a new audiance/former audiances and made them stay, they would obviously be making money on subscriptions that within 4 months cost the same as the 1 time price a AAA-title costs to buy.
Dropping the ball and seeing the decline in SoD activity, however, surely just costs them more as they now have to maintain a product (atleast a while longer) that no longer might not be profitable.
Cant be suprised people expected more than remade MC, when they advertised new raids and places. But yet again its “perhaps, maybe, soon” and people grow tired of being stringed along.
Fair point.
However: one thing to keep in mind is that classic players only pay for the subscription. While there certainly is a profit to be made from subs alone, that profit pales in comparison to the profit made from selling an expansion or better yet: all the junk in the retail in-game store. The question then is why should Blizzard invest in a product that will yield significantly lower profits than another product, both of which requiring roughly the same amount of resources to develop.
Would you be willing to pay a lump sum of €70 for classic+ along with the monthly sub? Would you be accepting of all the products in the retail shop being available in classic? Because realistically that is what’s required for Blizzard to be willing to truly invest in classic+. That’s how they get the best return on their investment.
Now this isn’t directed at you, but many seem to be under the impression that Blizzard is there to make you happy. Well it’s not, Blizzard is there to make money for its owners.
I honestly feel like paying €70 for classic + to blizzard would be, given the current circumstances with sod and wow as a whole, a truly terrible waste of money.
The only way for me personally that I would go for it is if blizzard literally made a separate company for classic + and had a full dedicated team assigned to it that is literally left alone to develop and create it. Other wise you get the same rather poor situation as we have right now where P2 was seen by a fair majority as a it lacking and P3 has utterly gutted the player count. P4 has to be outstanding to bring it back. But even so why would you push all that money into something that provides a gaming scenario like we have now.
While I understand that people can have different views or expectations, I totally agree. This is what I was hoping for Classic as well. Always thought Turtle WoW was a good example of Classic+ that Blizzard could take inspiration from.
I will even say more: I would like just a version of what we currently have in Classic Era where we have some extra content and extra progression. I am fine with the difficulty of Era, the combat, the classes, etc.
how are the shamans doing on the ptr. i expect nothing but awesomeness.
they are getting a monthly sub fee.
that is what they should expect and asking, no, DEMANDING anything more is pure greed.
if they want to milk the classic playerbase, then a monthly fee is the best they can hope for, bar maybe server transfers, which is where the gravy train should come to a full stop.
if they wanna add the token and the in-game shop a la boost service galore then go ahead, but that simply means everyone quits like what happened with wotlk and then they don’t get any money AT ALL.
a lot of people quit when they started introducing boosts and other “services” in TBC, but the nail in the coffin was the token which they put into wotlk… a lot of people including myself predicted that classic would die by a thousand cuts, which is precisely what happened.
first its a single character boost… then its as many boosts as you want… then its this or that other “QoL” paid service, and before anyone can look around, we got a fullblown retail in-game shop.
go check the shop in cata yourself. its literally just retail now… even got the shiny mounts and stupid pets and toys to boot.
also, the notion that making new content for classic is a resource-heavy investment is just megalulno. a bunch of nerds in their basements are working on project epoch which is like 10 times more classic+ than SOD will ever be, and those guys are doing it basically free of charge, because it doesn’t cost a lot if anything at all.
to sit here and pretend blizzard is investing 50 million dollars per new raid they are making is lunacy.
there is no expenditure to developing new content for classic other than the devs salary, so can we please kill and burry this stupid myth that somehow its expensive af for blizzard to make new content?
if they want to actually sell expansion packs for classic, then maybe they should actually make some (new) content and ship it as such… trying to sell old expansions as a new fully priced expansion wouldn’t sit well with the classic community at all… honestly, it would probably be a legal issue as well, if i had to guess… you can’t just tag on a couple of funny changes to classic vanilla and sell it as a brand new game.
they probably already discussed that internally before releasing SOD, and even blizzard suits were like “yah that’s a stretch bro”.
It’s not expensive but it’s not profitable which is why I believe that the only way classic + can possibly be anything decent is if it’s done by a separate company. There is too much “overhead” at blizzard for the money team to be like ye go ahead and blast all your time into this.
Private servers have a much better chance of creating a genuine amazing classic + but because of it being private it will never reach the same levels as classic
that’s not necessarily true.
Nostalrious got extremely popular to the point where they were genuinely competing with blizzard, hence why they sent out a cease and desist.
they came too close to actually becoming a contender so they killed that baby in the crib, so to speak.
For what is essentially a free product you get with the purchase of a subscription (for retail, mind you), that’s fine. But what people are asking for is a premium product on par with a brand new retail expansion.
Are they greedy? Perhaps, but Blizzard is not a charity, so you can’t expect it to behave as such.
That doesn’t seem like a very sound business plan. It’s fine for a hobby, but not a business.
How much it costs is completely irrelevant if not taking into account the potential return of investment.
Nothing does, judging by these forums.
fair points.
when project epoch takes off to the moon and blizzard has to send out another cease and desist, lets pray they actually take the hint this time around.
A product which yields no revenue, mostly consisting of a stolen product . Yeah I’m sure the higher-ups at Blizzard will be green with envy.
ehhh to say its a stolen product is actually up for debate, because its a fullblown overhaul, not just vanilla with some changes akin to SOD.
actual effort has been put in, as you can see based on their numerous hype videos.
so much in fact it could easily suffice as its own game entirely.
if blizzard would choose to argue their case they might actually have some issues, because its pretty much a standalone game that blizzard can’t objectively claim credit for, without resorting to bs arguments like games workshop did when they attempted to trademark the concept of space marines, which would be the only claim to a cease and desist they could realistically go for.
i mean, one thing is copy-pasting a blizzard product flat out, which is what Nostalrius did, but another is to make an entirely new game using the same engine, which is what project epoch is.