Hello there,
I was feeling really motivated to post this topic, bcs i couldn’t understand the idea that so many players have, that Blizzard gonna release TBC, to pursue the Classic Experience.
Let’s be clear first of all, Classic is not an expansion, it’s the core game. TBC is an expansion.
Next, in Shadowlands you can level your char in every expansion you want, and TBC is one of those.
My idea, and i repeat, it’s only my opinion, they released Classic to get some players back and actually have the version of the core game active and live, and redirect them to SHADOWLANDS (too many hints, getting back some spells, level squish to 60 etc etc, to make it comparable to Classic).
And i prefer to add this here, don’t get me wrong id be more than excited if they really decided to release TBC.
But there’s no logic behind that at all, because they made possible in Shadowlands to level in all the existent expansions, if they decide to release TBC, the only logic is to do it separately by not touching the core game, witch is Classic, so they’ll need to do it separately. If they release TBC separately (an expansion of many others), there’s no reason of they not releasing WOTLK, CATA, MOP etc etc, separately as well.
So, what is your actual argument to contrast mine? Money? You thin they gonna release only TBC? WOTLK? CATA? MOP? You think they gonna release only the expansions that they think it’s gonna bring them money? You think it’s cheap to hold multiple versions of a game like WOW on servers? Imagine all the technical teams for each expansion, if they release them separately, that have to handle all the bugs etc …
And when you buy Game Time it counts for Retail and Classic, so they getting nth, out of it. It is convenient but not as much as if the Game Time was different from Classic to Retail and possibly other expansions released separately.
Anyways, i could continue a lot, but id really appreciate that they release those expansions, or only TBC, i had a lot of fun back in the days, but i really think they released Classic to boost the game, and make it popular again and bring back old players, and to redirect new ones to Retail.
What do you guys think about my opinion?
Thanks for reading 
It makes perfect logic, your logic seems flawed. People will get bored of Classic and leave, then come back for TBC.
Besides Blizzard done just about everything but confirm it.
We don’t even know how they are going to do it, but I can say with 99% certainty they will.
The thing with leveling in shadowlands in other expansions is your just playing that zone from whichever expansion, you’ll get the feel of that expansion but not the actual gameplay. From the survey a load of people got a while back it looks like classic will stay and TBC will run seperate. Trouble is where does this stop, like you say… will it continue on and end up having every expansion running?
Having multiple expansions probably will bring some more money in, there will be plenty of people who don’t play wow but would pay a sub again for TBC or any other expansions, it’ll probably pay for itself as they aren’t making a new game, just making live servers of games they have already made.
It’s just natural progression, we got classic so people will want TBC and so on. But how do they draw the line on where to stop is my question
If Blizzard is gonna actually release TBC, they would better announce it officially, bcs it would make ppl be way more active on it, by levelling alts etc.
And especially “People will get bored of Clasic and leave, then come back for TBC” makes no sense, bcs if ppl start being less active on Classic, why would they release TBC, they would most probably say, it’s not worth it.
I get it, and i know the experience of levelling is obviously different, but it makes no sense to me, that they gonna release only TBC then, they should release all of the expansions then, releasing only TBC makes no sense at all.
And imagine, the actual in-game events, the arena seasons, bugs etc etc. You think it’s convenient economically for them to handle all of that on all expansions they gonna release separately?
Edit : And don’t get me wrong id love to be able to get the R1 i deserve and couldn’t get it in MOP bcs i had to stop playing. But it just makes no sense to me, if they release TBC they should release all expansions, and how much time is it gonna take? It’s useless if in 10 years they gonna release all of them, new games, new MMOS, are gonna get made and be more popular.
What makes no sense? TBC and Wotlk is the most played and majority of peoples favorite expansion. The trilogy of Classic, TBC & Wotlk is what most people sees as the real “World of Warcraft”. I personally think second half of Wotlk was the start of the downhill but I have a understanding for the people that rate that one as highest.
And no, they wont and should not release Cata/Mop/WoD and so on because they will never be near the numbers on those servers that the trilogy bring back.
Cause its all about the money money money
For all we know they will release them in the same order again, no point releasing them all at once with TBC, it’s all about the journey, vanilla-TBC-WOTLK and so on.
As for bugs and economy of releasing further expansions it all depends on what data they have and what patch they roll out for each expansion, all things only blizzard will have details about.
Edit; like others are saying, I doubt it’ll go beyond wotlk, there will be people that want further expansions but it’ll probably be a small amount of people.
Releasing them progressively extends the time players are subscribed.
Releasing all at the same time people just go play their favorite expansion, then stopping once they feel done.
My favorite is tbc, if they had released them at the same time, i would play tbc aka 2ish years subscription.
Progressive release where they let us transfer our characters to next expansion would make me stay subscribed 2ish years for classic, 2 ish years for tbc, and another 2 ish years for wotlk, for a total of 6 years instead of just the 2.
It cost them close to nothing to keep the servers running, only the very small dev team working on converting the expansions to work with the current client cost some money. And with the amount of people playing, they make good money on their investment so far.
I won’t be touching classic for long after naxx is out, what’s the point? 
There’s no progression after that, PvP is just one shots.
Very hard pass.
BC will be the one to convince me to stay on the older realms, otherwise I might as well just stick to shadowlands.
You are wrong. Vanilla and Classic isnt the same.
Classic isnt the Core game.
Blizzard stated that “The Classic Experience would be Core, TBC, WoTLK” as these follow the lore from the 3 Warcraft games. Cataclysm started what we call retail and is build upon bits of lore created for the expansions and from books etc.
So you can bet your tiny hat on that they will make TBC classic and Wotlk classic as these were the two most popular expansions and part of the Classic experience.
You can also do the vanilla raid(without Naxx) but it isn’t gonna be remotely the same experience on the normal servers compared to the vanilla server.
The game, the classes and literally everything is entirely different.
Well, i can see a logic if we speak about “Classic Trilogy” {Classic, TBC, WOTLK}. But i hope they release every expansion tho. MoP PvP was the most enjoyable for me.
And mostly of the Pro Players would agree with me on that, MoP PvP was the most balanced one so far, and competitively suitable to WoW.
And my question is kinda obvious : Why don’t they announce it officially? Like isn’t that better for them?
I know Pni and I agree it was balanced. That dosent mean everything needs to be perfectly balanced all the time. And WoW needs to be good outside arenas as well, that’s why TBC & Wotlk is so much more popular over all. We playing a version right now that can’t be more unbalanced than it is and people love it.
No i mean, it was mostly balanced, but what i forgot to say is that, MoP PvP was the expansion in witch i was enjoying mostly the game and the mechanics.
But it’s cool tho. Wanted just to get other’s people opinion on TBC release.
Thanks everyone for taking the time to answer to this topic.
They’ll announce it at a time that they can market it better, as they do with everything.
There is a logic. The logic is called money, as others have stated.
But releasing them as direct expansions? that would be a mistake. They could do the opening event, but the servers would have to be brand new, and people would have to start in tbc as lvl58, and wotlk as 68. with crafting skill matching that aswell, once picked.
That might upset alot of people, but there is no way in hell, that outlands or northrend can handle the amount of players we have on our realms today.
There are issues aswell. especially in wotlk, where worldwide lfg got removed, so everyone had to stay in laggaran. That was not fun back in the day with server pops of 1000-1500. Now imagine 5-10k?
And wotlk ruined the social part of the game aswell, with dungeon finder. Activating summoning stones was good. but the dungeon finder opend up for ninja guilds who couldent care less, because they could not get punished by getting frozen out on the realm. We had an entire guild getting banned on our realm back then, because of it.
And as others have said. releasing anything AFTER wotlk, would be a massive mistake. Them 2 expansions killed the game over all, made over 70% quit the game.
Just my 2 cents
This would invalidate the char we built up in classic, thats why they asked if people would transfer to a TBC realm from the current classic realms. I’m not a betting man but I do wanna bet they won’t take the ‘insta level 58 and free proffs’ route with TBC. Would there be limits? Only one char? What about my dozen alts? Free profss makes it feel like a p2w private server and generally people play there out of interest a few months and then leave?
Layering.
This was at the very end of Wotlk. Granted the last patch was about 1 year but the first part was LFG free. The LFG we got in Wotlk was server restrictive so you’d still only see people from your server, which was changed in cata with your battlegroup.
I agree!
The reason for Blizz to release TBC is, as others have pointed out, money, I’m sure I’m not the only one that has no interest in Shadowlands or any other retail expansion, but will be quite happy to pay my subscription to play Classic and TBC, possibly even WotLK if they release that as well.
I know they are making changes for Shadowlands, but I haven’t seen anything that makes me want to play it. I like the play style in Classic where, unless you are in a hardcore raiding or pvp guild, ;you can play around with the specs and talents, some may not be optimum for dungeons and raids, but hey can be fun for solo play, which I do a lot of. I like having a guild to chat with, I like seeing other people around, but i’m not really a team player.
Gain millions while investing thousands
No logic
What world do you live in?