Compared to WotLK, yeah I can see that. But compared to Vanilla that’s another story. Endphase TBC might have its flaws but it’s still way better than Endphase Vanilla
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It’s rather despressing, Wrath launch, by the looks of it, is only some months away and Blizzard has turned a blind eye towards classic/TBC community. If there was more time, there might have been a chance for TBC servers, but at this point…
The devs have made it fairly apparent that they are disconnected from the classic community and don’t actually understand why people play these games, further supported by the fact they are discarding TBC era and moving to Wrath era, when that’s not even the point of these older games.
I don’t know, i guess ill have to try private servers, but damn, i’ve invested a lot of time and effort on Blizzard’s servers, settled in, made friends, and the idea of starting all over on some foreign server is rather demoralizing, i care about my characters 
The saddest part is, instead of acknowledging that every player has their favorite expansion and wants to play it as it was, they try to mix the expansions now.
They take the vanilla mindset, thats intended to be a one character journey focused on slow gameplay and requires many social connections. And then they try to transfer it to wotlk, thats has completely different mindset: fast paced, causal focus, twink friendly, low entry bar, “bring the player, not the class”.
Vanilla and wotlk are completely different by design, so why design wotlk into vanilla?
In the end noone has anything faithful recreated anymore and noone can play their favorite expansion outside of private servers, because the current classic team tries to make their own thing, that players didnt ask for (besides some vanilla+ people).
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I don’t see why - if they want to experiment - they dont make simply two versions of wotlk… we don’t play on one server anyway, so why not have half servers one way, ohter half the other way.
And why not keep few TBC servers for players who want to stay. Possibly less servers, yes, but does that matter? If it’s too low of player count, then keep only one server, it’s super-healthy for the community anyway.
There are so many clear win-win situations and they instead force in some lose-lose.
That’s what annoys me absolutely.
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because tbc classic sucks
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classic era servers are dead long ago. who says otherwise is just a delusional fanboi.
they realized it was a mistake too. too much cost for 5-6 players.
thats why they never bring “era” servers again.
Classic is thriving on private servers, so no, classic era as such is certainly not dead. It’s Blizzard’s negligence,
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From where do you have this? It’s totally new to me. Vanilla was for me and most I met ingame a journey for one or two - even three - main characters and many alts to try it all.
I’m afraid The Vanilla mindset does not exist. Vanilla (and TBCC and even Wrath) is not one game, but many games packed into one. The freedom to choose how, why and what to play was the most important of the things that made Classic so wonderful.
I agree that we need as faithful a recreation of al three “Classics” as possible and that we need Era servers for all of them too.
Vanilla was designed without really specific endgame in mind. The main aspect of the game when it came out was the leveling process, the exploration of the world. Vanilla is slow paced and encourages forming groups in the open world more than it is in later expansions. This is an environment that enables players to have time to socialize. I dont think its written anywhere, but this is the design of the game.
Wotlk on the other hand is fast paced. There are catchup systems and account bound items, making twinking supported by design. This was not the case for vanilla. You could start multiple journeys, but it wasnt supported (making it faster/easier) by design. In dungeons the game is much faster with fewer/shorter downtimes and players use more of their time to actually play the game and less to actively socialize than it was in vanilla. Compared to vanilla wotlk was designed with primarily endgame in mind and that all players can play together on a similar level in a short amount of time. It was very casual friendly in this regard.
And yes, we need at least 1 lasting era server for each expansion, otherwise its like Blizzard forcing them to go to private servers to play their favorite wow version.
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I really dont know why you guys are being so negative about classic and TBC. If someone wants to play those, why not - if you dont want to, let the others do.
Blizzard is not gonna loose any money on having a couple more servers, if they were, they would have merged them already.
I can imagine them doing so much more, like enabling char transfer between classic era/som to tbc era/som and wrath era/som - thats a cash cow you can use forever, as people will always come back due to nostalgia, just like its on different private servers.
And if Blizzard would commit to having some servers stay long term, i bet there would be more people playing there, as they would have safety for their characters, what they dont have at the moment. Or lets say, private servers offer better safety atm…
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Exactly.
This is also great approach to life in general.
And this was / is exactly the thing about Vanilla I loved the most. Each Character was an independent experience.
by this you imply that levelling is not playing the game 
I never understood how endgame oriented = casual friendly?
Levelling you can do casually, in small steps each day, a week later, even a year later. There’s nothing lost by being slow and nothing won by being fast. Dungeons and raids on the other hand need you to attend, need you to have certain gear-pieces, consumables and so on.
Levelling is the casual experience, not the endgame.
And this is exactly why we need Era servers to all expansions. So that people can play their preferred version with no stress.
Wholeheartedly agree, as this is what I’ve said since forever 
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Surely you must understand that you are an absolute exception from the norm of a World of Warcraft player, right? For your average player end-game is the game, be it end game PvE or PvP. In Vanilla, if you fall behind, you stand very little chance of catching up with the times, ain’t nobody taking a greenhorn fresh outta BRD into your guilds AQ farm run, or into the Grand Marshal farming premade. Unless you are a girlfriend of the GM or premade lead - like premade leads have girlfriends lol, but I digress.
In Wrath, conversely, you can join the game, reach max level, and be somewhat ready for whatever is “current content” in 2 weeks of dedicated gameplay. Hence it allows “casuals” to join the “actual game” - that is current raid tier or arena with relatively little effort.
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OK. I see that I’m even more the odd man out than I previously thought.
And now I also better understand why I more and more disliked WoW for each xpac - all those catch up mechanics was of course the direct opposite of what I liked in the game 
Thank you for enlightening. And no, I’m nobody’s girlfriend, or boyfriend even
My guild must have been an odd one too.
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but on private servers a lot of people play …
The same issue that now massively plagues Retail, in Wrath - to a lesser extent. Designing an MMORPG around end game is a god awful way to design a game of this genre. The game should be designed around immersion, the world, community, hence the name of the genre, like it was in Classic, TBC, not end game raiding or PvP ratings, or e-sports. Wrath was the first step in that terrible direction, but the expansion still worked for various other reasons.
When me and many others play any RPG, the world and its activities is its biggest aspect and its biggest appeal, it’s why the classic community thrives(in private realms), not because of raid/PvP progression, which is merely an extra, but engagement with the world itself… Blizzard has completely lost connection with that, has been the case for many years now, longer than i can even remember and it’s a damn shame, like the whole gaming industry.
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Same here, in classic and TBC, your characters used to mean something, you worked for them, but having catch up mechanisms completely devalues that, even though retail’s issues are at deeper level. I lost count how many characters i’ve leveled on Retail again and again seeking that connection, only to stop playing them at max. Why? Because it has no meaning - leveling is quick, people/strangers come and go, world is worthless, no class and character fantasy/identity, epic loot everywhere.
Even now on TBC, this mage i’ve leveled is still meaningful to me, i put in effort to lvl from 1, quested, explored and engaged in the world, met people from all corners, communicated, killed elites together and otehrwise helped each other.
Can you imagine that even after my 18 years of WoW in Retail, getting a green item drop from a random quest mob in classic is still exciting? Because it is, even after all this time. Nothing in Retail comes even close to the feeling of playing classic/TBC.
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I agree the game design changed massively between vanilla and wotlk. However, that alone doesnt make wotlk terrible. Its just another game, quite different and more casual. Its more about straightforward playing the game instead of playing in a social sandbox world. However, there are more people who like the wotlk design than the vanilla classic design. Wotlk is still worlds apart from current retail, design wise and gameplay wise.
Vanilla was already recreated, its only fair if wotlk gets recreated faithfully too. Even if you personally think wotlk is terrible, let other players have their favorite expansion, that they have been looking forward to for many years now, instead of trying to turn it into vanilla+. You have my vote for endless era servers of vanilla and tbc. It makes sense to keep these expansions available outside of private servers.
And yes, we cannot expect Blizzard to make any new decent games with the current staffing, but that is even more reason to just recreate the games faithfully, because they break more than they fix. They have no idea how to design good games.
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Never said it was, i merely implied it took the first step towards a terrible design. That and the severe power creep began to seep in, and because of multiple raid difficulties, a large gap in player power began to form. between tiers as a result., but not as bad as later expansions and now in retail. It’s just another reason i dislike Wrath, that deviation from what used to make WoW so appealing for many originally. My few attempts at raiding back then were miserable as elitism began to grow across the board due to raiding turning multi-difficulty and into a competion rather than a chill, fairly casual activity it was in classic and TBC. PvP was unplayable, again, because of power creep, getting 1-2 shot by everyone, PvP gear or not, before you can even respond, where as currently in TBC i can actually play.
Of course there is a niche community who like Wrath and will play it, that’s fine,but due to my experiences back then, it would simply cause anxiety for me even today.
This is why not having TBC era realms is such a big issue for me, an era where game and class design is really enjoyable for me personally, a very comfortable spot between Classic and Wrath.
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How much do you pay every month to play on the private servers?