@@yammytime4273 I just looked, and it barely went up. Why don't you look at warcraft logs and see how many people are raiding on cata/classic/retail...? lol
@yammytime4273 that was purely hype, SoD brought in around 500k new subs, every conversation I've seen and numbers I've looked at show Retail is pulling in more. Deviate Delight has like 4 full guilds so my guess is max 5k people playing it, Retail is carrying WoW in numbers and revenue.
I agree that 12-18 months is too short a reset cycle for most people. I think it was WillE, maybe someone else, who once proposed an indefinite 6-year fresh Vanilla Trilogy cycle: Release fresh vanilla, 2 years later release TBC, 2 years later release WotlK, 2 years later restart the cycle anew. Just do this forever, maybe some minor vanilla+ tweaks along the way only with overwhelming player support ala OSRS voting.
I could honestly always play Wrath but Classic and TBC have so much annoying things about them I need more time, like needing so many shamans for raids in tbc and warriors only being the best DPS and world buffs
@@andreichetan4694 it really does sound like a black mirror episode. we're going to be 50 year olds posting in chat to get a group together to kill hogger for the 1,000th time. At some point you kind of just have to ask yourself, "why am i still doing this?"
People want permanent characters in an MMO with occasional new content. No one wants to grind for a character that will get deleted. Also no bots/boosts/xpboosts would be hype
I Love when people pull the nostalgia card when talking about classic. I never played vanilla or TBC during their initial launches back in 2004/2006. I started playing in WOTLK in 2009. So when Vanilla classic was announced, I was kind of excited because I knew it would lead to WOTLK Classic. When Vanilla classic launched, holy hell did I enjoy it. I didnt get to make it to 60 (hit 52 on my rouge before I started working and schooling full time) but the time I did play was 1000000 times more fun than retail. Then, when TBC hit, I actually maxed out my character and raided up to sunwell before they announced WOTLK. When Wrath dropped, it was surprisingly underwhelming. I maxed out 4 characters to 80 and realized how it felt more like retail. This is when I realized how much better Vanilla and TBC was to me. People talking about WOTLK being the peak but I think Wrath was the beginning of their downfall. Point being, I still love and play vanilla classic and hope they bring back TBC. No one can sit here and tell me "ItS NoStAlgIa" when I never played the game at launch, only on it's classic re-release. I also dont understand why people care who plays which version of the game. i will never touch retail again but u wont find me on retail videos talking about how crappy the game is compared to vanilla.
Legit, if you don't praise TBC up and down you probably weren't good enough to get keyed into Karazahn. TBC was peak and people like to shit on it because they probably never actually went through the content. It was so fuckin good
Nostalgia is probably a part for some players, but I also played with a lot of ppl in 2019, who never played wow before, with which I then also played completely through SoM and now SoD
this would be good. That way u dont lose your character u put time and effort in. But Blizz cant monetize this unless they make u pay to xfer your character to a forever era server
We already had this before with Season of mastery, which was a 12-month content cycle but people ended up hating it and it died off so Blizzard shut the concept down, its all about the timing of when they choose to release it, they have to " feel the room " when the community is truly ready for classic fresh
@@johanlahti84 Same but its no fun when you dont have a decent playerbase to play with, so they need to make sure when they do release fresh classic or a rewamped Season of Mastery, the hype for it is near max.
The reality is, there are 10's of thousands and on some versions 100's of thousands of people who love classic, retail, cata, sod, all of it. Doesn't matter. Anything and everything wow related people who love it, will love it. Idk why this is even such a discussion haha
@@swishersweeets1240 No. Cata HC would have ZERO challenges until u hit max level and raid. Blowing through world content 3 shotting mobs on your way to 85 is not hardcore.
100% agree with the rule of 3 here. Just like quitting smoking: 3 day hump, 3 week, 3 month, 3 year. If you make it that long, you're pretty good, but it seems to be a recurring rule in my life with anything addictive.
@Xaryu sounds like this New Server Meshing Tech could be the way to go then they won't have 50+ servers they mesh them all together so you can see all players at all times with little to no lag basically having 1 giant Global Server with every one on it together as an MMO should be.
I get the ich every 4 months to play WoW but decline the comeback at least 2x lol so every 6 month i play any sort of vanilla (hopefully HC if they're still alive).
I want "Self found" for era servers (maybe SoD too) I can still group and do dungeons but auction house / trading is blocked. No pressure to get x y stuff, no gold buying, no buy for boost ect. Just fun solo or with friends without much drama. (that being said, it would be nice to send mail between your own characters to make self found more casual but I dont mind either way)
@@joelhodoborgas self found doesnt mean you dont play with others. It is not ssf it is self found. You just dont trade with people or use the auction house. You are never stressed to "feel behind" or rushed because you earn everything yourself. I know the economy is a huge part for a lot of people but I dont see the point of checking out the auction house for a level 5 green with +1 spirit that costs 30silver on average. Gold is just so inflated if the servers are going for a while. With self found you give people the freedom and make it stress free. If you say "ye then just dont use it" it will always linger in the back of your mind, you can always use it but whenever there is a restriction, in this case self imposed, it can enrich your experience greatly in my opinion.
This one is a massive advantage of retail to anybody who likes that kind of playstyle. We get the brand new expansion every 2nd year. I feel like my time is better spent achieving things there rather than on a classic character which I'm effectively throwing away each one and a half to two years.
If you have hype to go back I would suggest to take a look at Turtle WoW 2.0 trailer, that's as an amazing as a vanilla new experience we can get from other than blizzard
I actually think what they should do is do like EverQuest did when it started to die… Progression Servers. Start a new server/group of servers every so often that starts from vanilla and as enough people get in and beat the content the next tier opens and then the next tier until everything is done. This way you can jump in and play whatever expansions you liked most and then dip when you’re tired and soon enough another server will be open and you can do it again whenever you get the itch. At a certain point you’d have to merge or remove the old servers but that’s gonna happen for any of these. That’s kinda what’s happening with cata classic now anyways as things have kept progressing but I think releases may be a little too slow for players if we’re going to do it again and again so that’s the biggest thing that needs solving, but otherwise it’s just what they’ve already done but improved slightly.
When i think WoW 2 i think a complete overhaul into a next gen MMO just like how WoW revolutionized the genre when it came out I think the future of MMOs is having NPCs be legit AI characters, current LLMs like chat gpt are almost good enough; imagine a world where the quests never end cuz rhe NPCs self generate them based on their personalities and the world changes based on how the quests complete. Add in survival game mechanics and boom we got a simulated world
The only thing that will revolutionize MMOs is going to be have to be a really well executed VR experience, and we just aren't quite there yet with VR tech and the masses haven't embraced it yet cause most VR games are neat gimmicky experiences.
@@Saiku I think that'll be big down the road :) but I think VR is like 2 or 3 generations down the line, whereas AI is basically right now. Check out Skyrim AI companions if you're curious. People say the best part of classic WoW is the leveling, and I think AI could make it so that experience never ends OFC that in VR is the dream tho, I just think good VR tech is further away than AI
Blizzard should just make seasonal servers that go from Classic, to TBC, to WOTLK and wipe after that to a fresh Classic seasonal server. I would come back to every fresh Classic when the servers wipe.
Wtf? Som popped off. It did die but that's because the fresh wore off. Back to my other comment. People want fresh. A year later is not fresh so people don't start characters
WoW 2 could just have a dream machine or pool or something that allows you to transport any charector to any WoW from the past and just consolidate everything into one game lol
Wtf? Every 3 years? The games only been out 5. It's like 6 months, but streamers only catch on a year later because they're too busy playing other trash for sponsor money. It shouldn't be up to streamers catching on and ruining things by destroying the community
Yes, the streamer brings his/her community, and boom, you have a community. It just blows up when you have half of the population of the original community to the community.
I played vanilla twice, back in the day and when classic came out and 5 years later I have no desire to go back. I played the first 3 seasons of Season of Discovery but I’m likely not going back, I’m enjoying raiding Cataclysm too much, the difficulty is right where I think it should be where it’s not so easy that everyone’s doing all the heroics yet and it’s not so hard that people who don’t know the fights can’t do them with some practice. My guild is progging heroic right now and we’re only halfway done… most of that’s because of time constraints but we have a decent pace and we still get everything done every lockout whether normal or heroic so we’re gearing up at a good pace and I just have no desire to go spend a month leveling to 60 again when the content I want is raids and classic raids were way too easy. TBC, Wrath, and Cata are the sweet spot for me before all the bloat to classes and pandas and demon hunters and all the bad stuff that was added and without the really time intensive grind to get there that classic was.
On the topic of Classic WoW tapering down after a while and the journey to max level being to best part of the game: I feel that this is mainly a conventional MMORPG issue. WoW sort of defined the conventional MMORPG formula and vanilla does it the best. What I find interesting is that the staying power to something like OSRS is much longer. While OSRS does continually see updates to the game that give players more things to do, the game's progression is really slow and the majority of players aren't maxed. I think it has to do with the fact that it isn't really a conventional MMORPG. While there are endgame raids and dungeons, they aren't really done in a way where they are sequentially stacked on one another. Instead, endgame rewards are designed to fill specific niches. Just today, a new quest, While Guthix Sleeps, was released, and with it new weapons that are effective against demons. Sure these new weapons don't outcompete the best general weapons in the game but because of their special damage bonus against demons, they become BiS for particular situations (demons slayer task, demonic bosses, etc). And these particular scenarios have their own individual rewards that help progress your character. Instead of pure vertical progression the game has a lot of lateral progression. And I think that increases the longevity of the game. Since lateral rewards are so interlinked (you want to do grind A for item X because item X makes grind B faster. and you want to do grind B for item Y) you always have something to grind towards. I wish Blizzard takes Classic Plus in that direction: lateral rewards and grinds that round out your character. I don't know how it would be done in WoW because structurally the game is different (themepark mmo vs sandbox mmo).
IMO though should just have fresh Vanilla, TBC, and WotLK servers refreshing every year. Make Vanilla reset in April, TBC reset in August, WotLK reset in December. Every year. 3 months per phase for each expansion. Or maybe less desirable have a 3-year cadence where Vanilla gets a reset which leads into TBC for 1 year then WotLK for 1 year. Then resets again for another 3 year cadence.
Adding my hat to the ring. I want a classic refresh. I missed classic and came back during BC/WotLK and it didn’t do it for me. I stuck around for retail; crazily enough. But the special classic realms don’t do it for me either, if I want new content I’ll play Retail. I want a classic refresh period.
19:50 YOURE ABSOLUTELY missing his point. Hes saying fresh doesn't last that long. As soon as people are dropping buffs it just feels like the 5 year servers
I started with TBC but Wrath was definitely the best iteration of the game. All classes were fun and rotations were not super bloated with spells or complicated interactions.
Im so glad you said to stop at wrath. I wish we could have peak wrath pvp again. Ques were dead within 2-3 months leaving a handful of the same players trying to form parties all day. Sad times.
the itch would be real if classic actually was vanilla world of warcraft , sadly , it`s not even close . the most important thing , the unknown , the exploration that everything around the corner was unknown . the friendships forming do to grp quests , generalchat were we helped eachother figuring out Quests etcetcetc. THIS can never come back . Happy i got to experience this from 2004 . the Era were epic was epic .
Nothing wrong with fragmented player bases. Less servers is the answer, not less games. Plenty of people playing each game, let them play what they want.
I began playing World of Warcraft the last 2 weeks of beta on the original release.... Since that time I've always wanted to come back to classic wow... I always have and always will but after about 2 weeks I'm like meh it's not the same. For me it's hard to replicate the things that I enjoyed back then.
The problem is that they give you the option to play these older versions of the game except it's not the exact same version that it used to be. Blizz has to mess with things. Like the most recent changes to ERA, none of that stuff was in original. People want to play ORIGINAL not original with diff flavors.
What about having seasonal characters instead? I saw an indie mmorpg that choosed that and for them it worked flawlessly. It would mean those characters can access a seasonal AH, seasonal Bank, etc etc. Once a season finishes your seasonal chars become non seasonal characters in the server. It could keep the servers without having to make more and have 10-16month seasons
Not sure why they couldn't just group the servers in the clusters in the server selection screen. Pretty easy to just say "hey these servers are combined"
I think the other side is, what is the end goal...cata classic, then what? whats the point, if your character is going away, why give a damn? Classic plus really is the only way to create a steady classic community and consolidate these 45 versions of wow
This is why content creators talking about stuff they don't understand is so damaging, he is talking about SoM in 2020 yet 2019 Classic didnt end until 2021 June. SoM was released mid TBC with massive raid changes/no wbuffs, different item progression and a sped up PvP ranking system. It was completely different from a standard fresh. The traditional Vanilla fresh cycle is about 3 years because it takes about 16-18 months to complete the release and a similar cooling off period. Old characters left over from a fresh launch would be moved onto Era servers just like they did with SoM.
If blizzard made classic wow with modern graphics (and literally everything else is the same) it would blow up so hard... shame they dont really give a shit 😢
I'd love to play classic wow again but the whole idea of GDKP combined with gold buying kills any hopes I have. I tried joining new realms and asking people the odds of finding a non GDKP and every time it was the same answer of "every guild is GDKP". just seems like blizzard doesnt really care that these actions are happening so many of the player base that just want to play casually stop playing like myself.
I hope with SoD they just go into Classic+ because I am really enjoying SoD and it would be cool to keep the rune system in to an extent, but they would probably force you to start at lvl 1 so I am wondering what they would do with your SoD characters in this scenario.
u cant trust Blizz to do classic+ correctly until they hire devs who actually give a shit. They ruined SoM, SoD and now trying to ruin Era servers by adding nonsense no one asked for.
I don't think seasonal classic servers are the way to go, they need to do active development for a classic+. In total it should be retail & classic+ which receive active development, then classic era & hardcore which can be kept open forever to appease that player base.
Season of Mastery was not fresh at all in my eyes, it was a seasonal server with exp boosts etc. It doesn't have remotely the same feeling as a real launch
I think only first phase of sod felt like classic, but it got so out of hand with power creep and rediculous items. I dont think having so many purple items at low level feels like classic in the slightest.
Cata pvp, while classic style no-homogenization PvE would be hype. Means some abilities are pvp only. Give paladins a taunt weaker than a warrior, but at least they would be able to tank instead of pretending they are a tank. And, make mages raid rotation at least 4 buttons in raid. In classic world that still has elites in quests that encourages group content. A dungeon finder that encourages socialization/communty by just being a better messenger client, instead of making everything so automatic that you might as well play with npc’s. Would be so hype!
They just need to make a WoW 2 at this point. Better engine, better graphics, less lagg, bigger servers. Take the good from both classic and retail and forge this into something new. Played Vanilla > Legion then quit, came back for Classic and TBC but at some point you're just done. After so many expansions retail is just too cluttered and the world feels empty, you don't really get that MMO feeling anymore. And Classic is just getting old. Especially with no new content.
5:48 I played SoM right after 2019 Classic Vanilla, and that was WAYYYYYYYY too soon, no one played it and it was an awful experience which i suffered till the very end, played all the way through Naxx. It's much better to release Fresh every 4 year so that massive hype builds and can sustain the population through the 6 phases, otherwise it's like SoM and you don't have anyone to play with by the time ZG releases. Also you are mistaken about SoM release date, SoM released right before Phase 2 TBC, which was only a few months after 2019 Vanilla ended, so the hype was just not there. What Vanilla lovers don't understand is that there needs to be MASSSSSIVE hype for there to be a successful Vanilla like in 2019. If people didn't play SoM they just don't understand how important it is to wait a few years to let the hype build to unsustainable levels. 9:20 the reason Blizzard had to do clusters and didnt force everyone on to one realm is because of the conflicting names situation, they didnt have a solution for that. So instead everyone in the clusters plays together on one server and they keep their names "Bugger-Whitemane, Bugger-Rattlegore, Bugger-Thunderfury, etc." The only solution to make clusters less confusing is to actually group the damn servers apart of one cluster together in the Realm List interface, with a bracket or highlight around the Whitemane-cluster for example.
I would be curious for Xar to elaborate more on his lack of interest in TBC (this isn't to suggest he's wrong for being disinterested, just curious). The "I already played it twice" isn't really an answer because he has played Vanilla how many times and in how many different angles and iterations? And he keeps wanting more, so there must be something else
Every 2-3 years. Played Vanille through wrath. Tried coming back a few times and meh. Came back for Classic. Then again for hardcore. Tried sod it wasn't classic+. Playing deviate now. Waiting for fresh. Imo.. Fresh with community mods. Find 20 trustworthy players, make them sign an NDA, and give them a singular Mod toon.
Xaryu, friends, rejoice. Classic is back. Join us on Mankirk cluster. Don't roll fresh realm that's dead. Roll Mankirk great community. Dungeons all levels. Raids. Join us, Mankirk!
Wille is probably correct as Naxx launched after 18 months of the original release and that is when things really started to change. If blizzard don't do something then every one will end up going back to private servers. When players signed up for a re run of classic they certainly did not expect it to go back to CATA...WoW players have a type of sickness and they yarn for the old way. Era would have been totally fine without TBC and Wrath as long as they made new content, lets face it that is clearly the route we wanted sort of like Jagex did with OSRS.
I expected and hoped for Cata vanilla tbc and wotlk all have their fair share of constant server launches and even stable dedicated servers but Cata has apollo which is shaky
How about adding a new realm that wipes fx like in rust you have weekly wipe servers right but here you add a new realm that wipes every idk 18 months that way you dont reset a whole realm or choose a server thats gonna get wiped right?
These guys asking for d3 seasonal servers like it’s a crazy concept… Starting completely over with zero changes would be so lame and a way to just burnout the player base.
I stopped playing when they got rid of the BR they had, I lost interest in SoD and my classic servers are literally dead..i play private server if I want to play wow. Project Ascension is really fun
after 4 or5 years after official vanilla all the classic andies now play remix plunderstorm cataclysm , sod etc etc and all forgot the pure game because of likes and subs
if they do fresh they need to say that its going to become tbc, warth cata mop before they realse it, so ppl know this server is going to go on for years, idgaf about any server that does have an end date or a end point of content.
There is a new fresh vanilla server like every 6 months to a year and they are always better then official classic but I guess streamers basically act like these dont exists anymore.
The problem is that they can not monetize these different "classic" fresh /seasonal servers the way they can Cataclysm/Retail (wow token/shop). It simply will always have a skeleton crew to develop/run them (like current). It is a sad reality. I WANT A REAL CLASSIC+ made by Fromsoftware or Elon Musk's people. SELL THE IP MICROSOFT ! ! !
