I dont know hiw many times we debated this same subject.
But ok, you remain in your trench, I hold mine.
Still cant agree to your idea of everything free, especially such small amount. If player really liked the game, paying one time fee wouldnt be a problem.
But as many said before, they wanted era to be their side game, to log once in a blue moon to check how things are and go back to tbc. They wanted ftp substitute.
Truth is players did everything in vanilla classic and they moved on, they had enough. Blaming author is just a scapegoat for hiding the truth.
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If, in some alternate universe where the moon is square they gave me control over WoW and the tools to make it into the game I really want to play then literally nobody would ever play my version besides maybe a tiny minority of hardcore table top RPG enthusiasts.
It would likely be the most unpopular MMO in world history, lose Blizzard billions of dollars in revenue, and probably get me singled out as the āman who killed WoW stone deadā. 
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We DO pay for the game. If we want something EXTRA we pay again, but demanding money - even a small amount - for playing our characters is just so wrong. And never, ever again (one paid transfer back after moving off HW with my guild) will I pay Blizz anything over and above my subscription.
Truth is that many is thinking like I do - either subs and rest is free or pay for all but the bare bones - and therefore did not clone their characters. They would have liked both, but did not want to pay for acess to Classic Era as well.
I would start by banning all PvP, all addons, all Quest help, and adding the stats page of the Achievement interface and a lot more cooking recipes - what would you do?
Oh a lot more than that. My dream MMO would have no classes at all.
Instead each player would begin their life as a āpersonā. A civilian. No combat abilities, save perhaps for a weak punch, certainly no magic. Youād choose your faction, race and then select your starting location, which could be a city, town, village, hovel, or simply alone in the wilderness.
Then follows a LONG, and I mean LONG introduction, if you could even call it that.
Youād need to find a way to survive, or pull your weight in the place you lived. This would mean learning a profession, trade, or series of abilities of some kind. You might decide to be a baker who sells their wares, and doing so would involve going through an apprenticeship, you might decide simply to serve drinks in an inn, or learn to fish and sell your wares in town in a little fleamarketā¦or join the local militia, where youād certainly begin to learn the basics of combat and self defence.
Iām assuming here that I, as a developer, have the cash and unlimited resources of Bill Gates, so these starting areas would be heavily policed, in the most draconian, tyrannical fashion possible by teams of GMs who would exist in the game and slap down hard on any players who were out of character who went OOC.
These guys would always be on the lookout for people who broke any and all RP rules, and punishments could be as light as a literal week in prison, to execution (which would be basically be permanent character deletion).
So you live your life, among a community of people with absolutely enforced RP rulesets, acting as they would, learning your crafts or whatever, getting along. Sure you could leave the starting area or village, but doing so would be potentially deadly. Youād have to rely on local transport, or militia patrols or hire mercenaries to keep you safe.
At some point you would get the option to have an adventure if you so choose. It could be a bandit attack on the village, or some other calamity, but if you decide to join in the resistance your life as a āheroā can begin, which is going to involve very, very intensive training in combat, or magic, or healing magicā¦whateverā¦ Youād have to actively visit the cities where these trainiers, or organisations lived, and getting there would be an adventure in itself.
It might take you five years to get to level cap, or even longer, but it would be a living world, full of danger and mystery.
As I said, itās a fantasy WoW that nobody save a tiny, tiny minority of geeks such as I would play.
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The freedom of choice in your dreamworld speaks to me, Not so the overly realistic take on the world as such. I mainly play WoW to escape from the toils and troubles of daily life, so I want magic, myth and monsters.
Classic WoW - as it is in Era RP servers when they are good - actually is my dream game. Magic, skills to improve, a figth to get started, to have enough money for your training, food and gear, but not ultra-realistic. I come from playing Dungeons and Dragons in a very old form (second edition) and WoW builds heavily on this. I was never much for live-roleplaying where almost everyone were innkeepers, cooks etc. I want action and things not to be had on this earth.
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Oh so do I, but I want to earn them, really work for them, not just have combat prowess or powerful magic handed to me because I happened to be born a Mage, Warrior or whatever.
The things thatās most appealing to me is the notion of starting from absolutely nothing and working your way up, gaining power and strength in direct relation to the effort you put in - so I want my early characters to be basically ācrapā, with no special abilities at all, but by the end I want them to be powerful.
This is probably when I play Skyrim I use a mod that sets all starting skills to 0, or when I play Diablo 2 I immediately chuck away all starting gear and go out there with my fists, and my personal rule is that I can only use and equip weapons or items that I pick up. Iām obsessessed with this concept of āstarting from an absolutely nothingā, for some reason.
I also differ from most other players, who want to start their game with a bunch of powerful items, heirlooms, boosts etc. Iām the polar oppositte.
Another reason why I hated Cataclysm so much. Hunters already starting with an āunearnedā pet, Warlocks able to summon a Felguard at L20, Druids learning cat form at some ridiculously early level etcā¦
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could you imagine all the talent trees all rolled into 1 huge talent tree and you could respec your character to any of the playable specs in wow, regardless of race. Would never happen outside of a pserver but pretty nice pipedream.
I also dream of skills getting lower when not using them ā¦ you loose letās say one skill point per 3 days you do not cook and so on 
Yes, for playing your character in two different games on two different servers taking twice as much resources.
Sorry, I just dont belive in free lunch.
That is true, people like free stuff, failing to realize things cant be free, people make living of selling, not donating.
If I could pay a reduced sub for Classic only, I would be willing to pay small extra amounts here and there, but Blizz is milking me big time getting full price for half a game.
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Eh I understand why Blizzard wanted to have you pay for Cloning given that it dublicate your character and so does not require you to do work twice. From my opinion it should have just been only 10ā¬ from the start. 40ā¬ would be a full boost where you do nothing but you did something so it is only half the work. Then there is no guarentee that you did went all the way to 60 so given that you would likely only cloned 30+ characters it should put away another half for for only having half the of the worth.
So 10-15ā¬ depending on either the full boost would cost 40 to 60ā¬ would be an okay price and in the end they only demanded this.
Human scum and their hypocrite carebear philosophy needs to be whiped from the face of Azeroth. Iād flay your face, eat your face and drink your tears while doing so. How am I supposed to RP your face on a trash PVE server?
Iāve missed SoM, but hasnāt the English RPPVP server always had a higher population than the English RP server? There is a much higher PVP server demand in general aswel, if any server, Hydraxian Waterlords should be deleted going by statistics.
Never before has there NOT been an RPPVP server, this is OUTRAGE! 
I say maim and butcher every and any Alliance rat in sight, this cannot go unpunished.
I had filled up the realms with new alts when the price was finally reduced.
They could also have set a max amount per account so after 5 characters rest were free or something.
This could have been done in so many more helpful ways. Now all my clones were just deleted, so they had all the trouble cloning them without earning a cent on them, only making me bitter in the process.
Yeah and the one surviving should have been the German RP-PvE Realm Celebras if we go by statistic as even back then when all the realms where decided to be delated, Celebras had still with 250 active players more players then all the other servers together.
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They should have just admitted their mistake and left all RP servers alone.
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wtf ā¦
God, I really miss Zandalar Tribe.
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This is true, but Nicolay is correct in that the server was in a bit of a death spiral halfway through phase 2. However, there were many underlying causes to explain why there was a dip in activity, and Iām hazarding a guess now but I think it was true for many other servers as well. Before free transfers even opened people had already began flocking to the bigger servers (later dubbed āmega serversā).
I think ZT had a fairly good size in Phase 2. The problem is that people that were playing were playing at the end game, making the world rather empty for those that wanted to level, and it made it very hard to find people for dungeons since the vast majority of players no longer had to do them. I myself quit because I ran out of things to do; I didnāt want to join a raiding guild for 25man raids so I quit and until ZA came out. When I came back my server had been drained, but even so I remained on it and for a while we had a small but strong community going.
I donāt know what Blizzard could have done, but what they did was not the right solution. Nicolay is happy because he enjoys the climate of the mega-servers, but I would never feel content on such a server. I migrated to Hydraxian Waterlords which, if you check on Ironforge, is not really a big serverā¦ but Iām liking it all the same. I just wish that I could have remained on ZT instead.
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In my case, the roleplayers all left the roleplay realms and gathered at one. For those (like me) who didnĀ“t leave, the roleplay was dead afterwards.
There are now a few roleplayers back on my retail RP Realm cluster, but the cluster is stillā¦ empty. (fun fact: before pre patch emptier than my killed RP Realm, Celebrasā¦ but the retail one was flagged as āmediumā no words)
WeĀ“ve had people who "had nothing against roleplay, nothing effective.
Classic was great - roleplay everywhere, but it died thanks to thisā¦ people.
Cele was the first realm i felt good again 
On retail they added 10 slots. 
Since they already consolidated all realms under one tab, there are no āenglish, german, french, ā¦ā realms anymore. ItĀ“s impossible to undo it, because they canĀ“t force english speaking people on a german, french etc. realm, what they would do if they undo it.
And they probably will never create language specific realms again
Therefore i assume, there will be - maybe, if they touch it - one PVE and one PVP, very likely Pyrewood and Firemaw.
If we are lucky, one RP, but iĀ“d be a bit surprised.
IF they merge it (CHAOS 
), theyĀ“d have to rise the character cap on era, too. Then you could create 50 chars on one realm.
We have the same functionality for free.
ItĀ“s called āPTRā and āBetaā
Truth is, that there are people RIGHT NOW coming back, realising their realm was murded, intent to go back to Classic and canĀ“t find their chars, because they are gone.
I guess, that was the main intention. No one could predict, how many players would stay, how many leave.
But to delete now all old chars, was imho wrong.
This, excactly this.
Zandalar Tribe had less than 50 active players left in the end.
And on era, there is no one left.
Going by statistics, the decision was correct, to kill Zandalar Tribe.
ThatĀ“s why we donĀ“t go for statistics 
Nevertheless:
I want Celebras back
translates into Wkellar:
Roleplay.
This comment was in character
And i Celebrasā¦
And NOW Blizzard doesnĀ“t want mega realms anymoreā¦ Sigh
They should have done, what they did, but leave the RP realms alone.
Instead they could have reduced the PTC cost for some weeks, so that everyone who REALLY was unhappy, could leave.
But the FCT were wrong.
And at least Hydraxian Waterlords and Celebras could have been connected.
Probably some more Celebrasions would have stayed, but the different realm tags would have made it easier to see, whith whom one can play and communicate.
Not sure what Zandalar could have helpedā¦
And we do not have an alternative anymore. Granded, who speaks english can choose Hydraxian Waterlords, and one of the fresh to have not so overcrowded feeling.
But the germans were overrun on Lakeshire by mega realm players, and canĀ“t switch to Hydraxian Waterlords due to the language barrier.
And Hydraxian Waterlords also did not really recover (because most of the Celebras players never came).
In regards of the RP realms, everything went wrongā¦ :-/
Oh, btw waves at Terres with her alliance and horde Hydraxian Waterlords characters
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