As a vanilla-server hater: I really hope that vanilla-servers will be a success!

[Velerios]

Yes, i'm a vanilla-server hater. But now that it comes out i really hope for a huge success for the vanilla-servers. Not because of vanilla, it was one of the worst experiences i had, but because of future of the system.

I really want to see a working, flourishing purist vanilla-server for the beginning. And maybe then they expand the system:

Maybe later another server, a non-purist server without the "inconveniences" Ion spoke in the twitch-chat, with transmog and loot of multiple corpses. Not on the purist-server naturally, but on a decicated one! And maybe even latter one of future expansions; TBC, WotLK and 5.2 MoP. Or even a Progression-server, a lot of thinks might be possible if there is a working system, playing a older version of the game.

As much as i disliked Vanilla, i really hope for a success of the Vanilla-Servers, because they might expand them.

[dwarven]

My hope is that there will be such a huge influx of players to Vanilla that it will reduce retail's population and cause Blizzard to implement more Vanilla style gameplay in retail as well.

[Velerios]

My hope is that there will be such a huge influx of players to Vanilla that it will reduce retail's population and cause Blizzard to implement more Vanilla style gameplay in retail as well.

No thank you. Farming 20 hours green dragons for the AQ-Opening in one day isn't the way i want to play wow again. Playing a healer, having full T2-Set and dealing less damage on farming mobs than a fresh level 60 (with some pieces of +damage/heal) is not the way i want to play wow either.

But yes, somethings i really want to see in Retail as well: Dungeons for example: i want more dungeons like Maraudon or Sholomance: multiple entraces, multiple ways to go through the instance, skipping bosses, secret ways, hidden bosses, little secrets like the hidden room in Scarlet Monastery, or BRD all in all: this was maybe the best dungeon ever.

That is definitively a thing that i want back in Retail. Because since TBC where was NOT a single Dungeon where you didn't simply run from A to B, killing nearly everything in the way. Dungeons are simply boring since vanilla.

There are more good aspects of Vanilla, but all in all the experience was horrible compared to TBC and WotLK.

And here i come back to the topic: If Vanilla is a success, they might expand the system and maybe think too: what were the good aspects of vanilla and how can we implement them. And what were the bad ones that we should not repeat. As long as they don't implement the bad ones in Retail, it can only improve the overall experience of WoW. (and with WoD 2.0 on the horizon it can only be better)

[Schattenlied]

My hope is that there will be such a huge influx of players to Vanilla that it will reduce retail's population and cause Blizzard to implement more Vanilla style gameplay in retail as well.

My thoughts exactly.

[Powerogue]

My hope is that there will be such a huge influx of players to Vanilla that it will reduce retail's population and cause Blizzard to implement more Vanilla style gameplay in retail as well.

I mean they've already been doing that with Legion. Trying to bring back the good without the bad. I think that's where the gold lies.

Trying to make a server for every single sub-demographic of vanilla lovers will never work though. There would be thousands.

[Schattenlied]

No thank you. Farming 20 hours green dragons for the AQ-Opening in one day isn't the way i want to play wow again. Playing a healer, having full T2-Set and dealing less damage on farming mobs than a fresh level 60 (with some pieces of +damage/heal) is not the way i want to play wow either.

But yes, somethings i really want to see in Retail as well: Dungeons for example: i want more dungeons like Maraudon or Sholomance: multiple entraces, multiple ways to go through the instance, skipping bosses, secret ways, hidden bosses, little secrets like the hidden room in Scarlet Monastery, or BRD all in all: this was maybe the best dungeon ever.

That is definitively a thing that i want back in Retail. Because since TBC where was NOT a single Dungeon where you didn't simply run from A to B, killing nearly everything in the way. Dungeons are simply boring since vanilla.

There are more good aspects of Vanilla, but all in all the experience was horrible compared to TBC and WotLK.

And here i come back to the topic: If Vanilla is a success, they might expand the system and maybe think too: what were the good aspects of vanilla and how can we implement them. And what were the bad ones that we should not repeat. As long as they don't implement the bad ones in Retail, it can only improve the overall experience of WoW. (and with WoD 2.0 on the horizon it can only be better)

Well, he said more of, not all of, "more of", would put it at the TBC and WotLK era design philosophy, which was the best IMO. Good middle ground between the ridiculousness of vanilla, and the equally ridiculous in the opposite direction crap we have now.

I would also like the class design philosophy of tbc/wotlk era back, where classes actually had variety in their available abilities, instead of the pruned-to-hell shit we have now.

[Velerios]

I mean they've already been doing that with Legion. Trying to bring back the good without the bad. I think that's where the gold lies.

Trying to make a server for every single sub-demographic of vanilla lovers will never work though. There would be thousands.

Who knows, in the future it isn't even necessary to have a server for this and that: getting rid of the PvP-Servers shows the direction WoW is going: getting rid of all servers

Maybe there might not be even a vanilla-server at all: maybe you simply log in, decide what wow-version you want to play (or progression), PvP on/off, RP on/off, create a character and play the game without the need of a specific servers at all.

Still: right now i think there will be servers and hopefully they are a huge success. But if the playerbase shrink in the future, who knows if they implement a new system for it.

[Lochton]

My hope is that there will be such a huge influx of players to Vanilla that it will reduce retail's population and cause Blizzard to implement more Vanilla style gameplay in retail as well.

Oh yes! I am sure they'll embrace more grinding!

[Velerios]

Well, he said more of, not all of, "more of", would put it at the TBC and WotLK era design philosophy, which was the best IMO. Good middle ground between the ridiculousness of vanilla, and the equally ridiculous in the opposite direction crap we have now.

I would also like the class design philosophy of tbc/wotlk era back, where classes actually had variety in their available abilities, instead of the pruned-to-hell shit we have now.

Absolutely true. I also wanted to write about the ridiculous class design we have nowadays, but then the text would have gotten too long. Class design in WotLK was the best without pruning of abilities and hybrids. A priest still felt like a priest even in Shadowform: you had still most abilities of a holy/disc priest, but nowhere near as effective as a dedicated healer. And pure damage-classes hat a lot of usable utility.

That was a time where class-ability wasn't pruned for the sake of PvP, dps rotations and bloated UIs. But this is not a pure vanilla-trait, i think the best time for classes was WotLK, a big talent tree and a lot of choices.

I would love the talent-trees back, MINUS pure +damage/healing talents; although this would not matter much nowadays, because this talent tree would have 120 points and here we would actually need some filler-talents. Here the Artefakt-tree really shined how a talent-tree could look like. without the many pre-requirements of course.

[Super Kami Dende]

My hope is that there will be such a huge influx of players to Vanilla that it will reduce retail's population and cause Blizzard to implement more Vanilla style gameplay in retail as well.

The good things of Vanilla pretty much carried through with Retail WoW anyway. There are very few Vanilla things I can think of that were in Vanilla but not in Legion and the things that were in Vanilla but not in Legion were removed basically because they were shit and the majority of the active playerbase asked for them to be removed.

[Schattenlied]

things that were in Vanilla but not in Legion were removed basically because they were shit and the majority of the active playerbase asked for them to be removed.

Sometimes, you think a thing is bad until it's gone, and then realize how important it was.

[Torrasque]

For a general rule, I agree, I want Classic WoW to be a success now that they have committed to going forward with the project. Not because I will not and do not want to play them, but because it is, in a matter of fact, a tremendously time, resource, and money consuming project, by default. If it fails, that means the Blizzard's other titles will have to suffer the makeup for contributing those funds, manpower, and resources. That is, by definition, has always been my issue with Blizzard taking on Legacy Servers, both from a gamer, stockholder, and general fan of Blizzard.

[Deleted]

The Vanilla realm will probably be like the retail game, good at lauch, and population will be lower and lower with time (Like every game and product) considering how time consuming it was. An extremely good player couldn't progress if his gametime wasn't as huge as the guy who can invest hours and hours. And this is without speaking of the spec elitism back then. (The game was enough to play solo and progress to a certain level, i loved it for that - for those who played Ryzom or old mmo's, the easy solo levelling of WoW was a relief.)

But most important, i think the community will destroy it. Look at this forum, rage into rage into arrogant people into stupid graphs into mean words into new posts to have approbation of other players (Like when you tell a joke, and look around you desperate to have a reaction to confirm that your joke was good.)...
The vocal (and loud) community are the SJW of WoW, claiming to bring the wonderful harmony of community experience and stuff, while being despicable angry childs towards anyone who doesn't have the EXACT same opinion.

The poor guy who really wants to forge his own opinion...

Anyway, good luck, i don't really care about Vanilla server, i played it, i fucking loved it, and having Classic realm doesn't bother me at all, i like Legion, and i look forward to BfA.
As long as i have fun, i don't really care about comparing my dick to other players ("Vanilla is for real players"), which is, in my perception and reading of all this forum, the main concern of lots of people.

[Hctaz]

Sometimes, you think a thing is bad until it's gone, and then realize how important it was.

And also sometimes things added to the game seem like really good ideas until you realize the negative impact it has.

There are plenty of things that have been added throughout Retail that have inadvertently "removed" certain aspects of the game that people loved. Flying/LFD/LFR/server and faction changes/cross realm groups/CRZ... they've all drastically changed the feeling of the community and the feel of the world as an actual place.

Edit: I don't know about you personally, but I remember being super hype for Flying mounts and LFD when they first came out... And then I slowly realized the community I had loved growing up and playing with was dying. I asked myself why, and I realized that these changes, while great in terms of time commitment, also made the game dramatically "easier" in one way or another. The game being more time consuming made it more difficult to finish things. It's not true difficulty, but taking 1 hour just to form a 5 man dungeon group is a type of difficulty. You have to be prepared for it. Flying made the world and the mobs less significant. It allowed you to bypass things when you otherwise would have to fight.

LFD not only made it much easier to find a group, but was also what caused the Cata dungeons to fail. LFD was introduced at a time when the heroics from Wrath were piss easy. They were never as hard as TBC, but they were so easy that literally anybody could faceroll them. People who had never done a dungeon before in their entire WoW life were now experiencing these dungeons and saying "Well this isn't that hard!" Ghostcrawler rightfully tried to get dungeons to be something that took time and effort to finish. Clearing Cata dungeons that first week or two was really, really fun for my guild and I. We had a genuinely good time wiping to trash if we pulled an extra pack. Or wiping to bosses because we messed up a mechanic. But... those guys who had been introduced to dungeons in 3.3.5 (I believe was when LFD was put in?) were now complaining. "Why is my group wiping? We're dying on trash! Grim Batol took me nearly 2 hours to finish cuz of all the wipes!"

They were nerfed into the ground and never made difficult again =/ it's why Mythic dungeons are not queueable to this day. They don't want their hardest dungeon mode to be ruined by random groups complaining that they're too hard (and they aren't anyway. They're way easier than Cata heroics and DRASTICALLY easier than TBC heroics)

Not only this, but then servers started to matter less and less... You wouldn't remember people anymore. That kind of stuff. I used to know every guild on my server. Nearly everybody's name. I knew the hunter who collected pets, the warlock who was a shitposter (Butterteeth was his name) in trade chat who would end every shitpost with "Send me your gold!". I knew the Blacksmiths who would give you good rates, the enchanters who wouldn't charge you for their time if you provided mats. I don't know anybody outside of my own guild now =/ and that's the way it had been since Cata.

[Schattenlied]

And also sometimes things added to the game seem like really good ideas until you realize the negative impact it has.

There are plenty of things that have been added throughout Retail that have inadvertently "removed" certain aspects of the game that people loved. Flying/LFD/LFR/server and faction changes/cross realm groups/CRZ... they've all drastically changed the feeling of the community and the feel of the world as an actual place.

Yup, sometimes the convenience just sin't worth it.

I didn't particularly have a problem with server transfers, if someone left the server, no difference from them quitting, if someone joined the server, they joined the server, whatever, they are a part of it now.

But all crossrealm things and LFD/LFR made the game feel all kinds of wrong. Server community ceased to exist, people all but entirely stopped talking to each other because you'd realistically never see the people you were grouped with ever again. You stopped recognising names on your team, and the other, in Battlegrounds... Everything became impersonal and that made it less fun. The convenience isn't worth it.

[Hctaz]

Yup, sometimes the convenience just sin't worth it.

I didn't particularly have a problem with server transfers, if someone left the server, no difference from them quitting, if someone joined the server, they joined the server, whatever, they are a part of it now.

But all crossrealm things and LFD/LFR made the game feel all kinds of wrong. Server community ceased to exist, people all but entirely stopped talking to each other because you'd realistically never see the people you were grouped with ever again. You stopped recognising names on your team, and the other, in Battlegrounds... Everything became impersonal and that made it less fun. The convenience isn't worth it.

Yeah. I edited my post to include more detailed information about the types of things that ease of access ruined as well. Feel free to edit your post to reflect it. My thoughts weren't all compiled together when I first hit enter on my initial post.

[moremana]

My hope is that there will be such a huge influx of players to Vanilla that it will reduce retail's population and cause Blizzard to implement more Vanilla style gameplay in retail as well.

Me too.

Here's to hoping they don't mess it up with QoL changes!.

[Pandragon]

I'd love a wrath server. See what it's like to tank HMs at that level with more than 2 fps. lol

My hope is that there will be such a huge influx of players to Vanilla that it will reduce retail's population.

That isn't gonna happen.

[HavokHeart]

My hope is that there will be such a huge influx of players to Vanilla that it will reduce retail's population and cause Blizzard to implement more Vanilla style gameplay in retail as well.

Yep- This is very probable imo

[Deleted]

My hope is that there will be such a huge influx of players to Vanilla that it will reduce retail's population and cause Blizzard to implement more Vanilla style gameplay in retail as well.

Even if, why would they?
Curious here

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Yep- This is very probable imo

Because? I rather see them expend into expansion in the same playstyle then overhauling retail.