There’s next to no chance that phases are gonna roll out that shortly.
What will happen IMO is that phase 4 will roll out in April/May, phase 5 will roll in August, and phase 6 will roll in January/February of next year. Meanwhile, TBC will be announced at Blizzcon 2020 and released in late 2021.
Feel free to quote me on this when it happens.
Hi, I really do not agree with pretty much anything you said.
There was nothing wrong with having to respec for PvE and PvP. Gold was not as much of an issue thanks to daily quests. Anyone could do a couple and afford the respec along with raid consumables. Which was godsent mainly for the healers that are having the hardest time of all right now.
The raids were somewhat difficult, surely more of a challenge than what we have in Classic right now. Which is a good thing!
My main beef with your claim is that in Classic at this moment I don’t have a lot to do anymore, so I usually just raid log. Reason being that there is no Arena. BGs (which I did plenty back in the day) are also not a thing due to me being Horde and having ungodly long queue times.
There still was world PvP in TBC. Most of it in Classic happens in front of instance entrances and that can just as well be the case for TBC. Also Elemental Plateau and the like. Only difference was that with flying mounts corpse camping wasn’t as toxic as it can get on Classic.
You may not like it, but I am very much looking forward to TBC. All the things I miss on Classic will be there.
After phase 6, what?
I wonder that myself. What could a player do, when he/she already farmed all the best gear?
Maybe he/she will relax and try to do some fun wPvP. To have some tough enemies (or friends) on the other side. Personal vendettas with people you feel you actually know. Taking revenge from hostile (aggressive) guilds. Killing or stalling their PvE progress. Your name will be known. You will be famous or infamous for your skill or behavior (I don’t remember not a single name on Razorgore server).
Or just leveling alts, so you can learn all classes.
Its not an easy subject. I enjoyed TBC, but I did not like it. My friends, made it fun to play, but I really dislike the zones and the lore. Outland, felt alien in a bad way, to me. It did not fit my “where the Orcs lived” image at all.
Flying mounts, added to that bitter feeling, and I agree with some saying that it ruined the interacting aspect of the game.
Arena was really fun and skill required, but it isolated players from real world. Its like it was a parallel small, boxed game.
Don’t know about class balance. With Shadowcloak and Shadowstep, I felt like Superhero. Almost too easy against some classes (SPriests being free kill). Rogues could pop up in a middle of a raid in AV, and kill a caster (Shadowclock + Cheat Death).
Yes, more specs were playable in PvP and that was a good thing.
Maybe, “You think you do, but you don’t”, is not so far from truth. About a lot of things.
You know T0.5? It was a catchup mechanics as many other in classic.
Or B11 Elf Ret paladin farming Gruul for the dragon spire trophy. Some content was always farmed.
I’m not up for TBC. I think a lot of the problems that caused the decline of retail have their roots in TBC and I don’t think it will be as fun/have the same long-term viability of classic.
That’s my take on it at least.
Personally I’d like to see a classic+ (a post classic expansion, taking the place of The Burning Crusade one, in the spirit of classic; No flying, no group finder, leveling bein fun and meaningful, classes being unique, etc)
But I have serious doubts that today’s Blizzard could ever make a wow expansion of good quality.
Ever played everything else than a fotm spec? If yes you will know that the social aspect stops here.
Classes are kinda unique but balancing doesn’t exist and some specs are broken to a huge point.
Some have no unique value and get left out.
Remember BoK being a 31 ret? Now everyone can spec buffs and you have not much reason to bringt something else then holy.
What I meant is that in classic, each class had specific strength and weaknesses. In retail, it feels like each class’s toolkit can answer virtually anything and feel very very similar.
I played wow retail for 2 years and that was my impression (and, judging by youtube comments, forum comments and what I’ve heard from the hundreds of friends/acqueitences I’ve made over the years, the impression of large numbers of people as well).
I agree some specs are just ignored, which is bad and should be fixed… by ensuring the spec’s strengths stay unique.
Mate I’m playing retribution paladin in classic… not too fotm and I right?
See how social they are to you? “Sorry wrong spec no invite”, “go play holy”.
The attitude has changed and not. Players usually play standard specs and don’t know what other specs bring or think they need to optimize 100%.
That came only later. Especially Mists and cata did something like that.
WotLK especially in the beginning was very on that point. Everyone brought a buff or did something. I remember as ret I was glad for every buff because I profited from caster and meele buffs.
To be fair, you have more class-spec diveristy in classic than you do in retail.
But you have more in TBC than you do in Classic. TBC was the peak of class/spec diversity.
Hah, I agree… lets skip TBC right into WotLK! 
Now seriosly… Classic WoW has a bit of content in a near future, but after that, they have to bring TBC or Classic+, otherwise the servers will just slowly die.
Yes, classes in Classic are more diverse and thats definetly plus for Classic. But at the same time, a lot of Classic classes are unplayable.
So it is really hard what is better, I vote for retail version.
But the best version would be create playable classes that are different from each other. Yet Blizzard resigned on this with the 0 change policy in Classic.
I don’t know if I’m a minority on this but I just want arenas. I don’t care whether you keep it classic or transition to TBC or WOTLK, both of which were great expansions and the peak of WoW’s success.
As someone who doesn’t like PVE, I want a competitive PVP experience and BG’s get extra boring after a while.
I think Vanilla is pretty balanced so if it’s possible to add arenas and keep classes how it is now would be game changing.
Let people PVE if they wanna PVE and let competitive people play arenas and if you wanna sit in BG’s all day or wPVP you can still do that too.
Not adding a feature that many people enjoy(arenas) won’t help anything except Retail, because I guarantee the addition of arenas will cause a lot of people to transition from retail into classic
Ye if they ever make classic + arenas are a must.
I would absolutely adore TBC servers with gated raid releases.
Yeah, BC haters are the biggest hypocrites here.