The WoW Classic community is entering a civil war.

[bash the fash]

The big money for vanilla is going to be in getting people to buy the game upfront. After a few months, when everyone realizes they'll either a) never get to Naxx, b) have already cleared Naxx, or burnt out grinding the gear to clear it, or c) never made it past level 40 because leveling is a chore, the population will shrink to the hardcores. It's financially a lot smarter to get $40-60+ upfront instead

[RobertoCarlos]

The big money for vanilla is going to be in getting people to buy the game upfront. After a few months, when everyone realizes they'll either a) never get to Naxx, b) have already cleared Naxx, or burnt out grinding the gear to clear it, or c) never made it past level 40 because leveling is a chore, the population will shrink to the hardcores. It's financially a lot smarter to get $40-60+ upfront instead

make it free, get interest back in wow and people will play the live version thus making money there

[Coconut]

make it free, get interest back in wow and people will play the live version thus making money there

I don't get the "make it free" mental gymnastics. If they want to promote Live with free content they can just hand out free game time on Live.

[jstnw89]

The war is already over

[RobertoCarlos]

I don't get the "make it free" mental gymnastics. If they want to promote Live with free content they can just hand out free game time on Live.

they do that too. Can level to 20 for free even

[Occam-OC]

There is no divide.

The legacy crowd have always and will always just want as true to the original experience as possible. Hence when we had to create our own private servers like Nost or Elys, they were basically exactly what we wanted. Vanilla as close as we could get it.

The other people that joined the movement can be categorised into 2 rough groups. The bitter "you'll never get legacy realm" trolls and the clueless people who never played Vanilla but jumped onto the bandwagon when the servers got announced.

I did play Vanilla and am far from clueless. Your categorization of people shows what type of person you are.

You guys get way too heated over the implementation of this. It will be what it will be. This post shows as much ignorance as basically the whole community has at this point. NO ONE knows what it's going to be like and EVERY opinion is valid on how people want to experience classic.

[Kilee25]

I think we have at least two different crowds of pro-legacy people:
* The ones that have played private servers for years and have been sort of brain washed by the experience and nothing other than the Nostalrius core will satisfy them.
* The ones that haven't touched a private server but have been longing for vanilla for years and are open to smaller changes where they make sense.

And then we have the people that really doesn't want vanilla at all, these are the people suggesting things like LFR, transmog and shit like that.

I agree. I think you hit the nail on the head.

[Risale]

As WoW Classic shapes up in the following 2 years, Blizzard will have to deal with many critical and possibly -very- decisive AND most of all -DIVISIVE- decisions on what to keep identical, and what to ''improve'' (distilling the purity of the game for QOL reasons).

Let me stop you right there. Blizz has to do jack shit. They announced classic and they will give you the classic that "they" want not what you or any other person wants and "they" will release it when "they" want to and not a second before.
Ion will come on in one of his Q&A's with Lore with cherry picked questions and tell you how "they" see classic, just look at the vod of the last Q&A 90% of the chat was about classic and 1st thing Ion/Lore said we are not going to discuss classic period, end of, discussion closed, shut the fuck up (pick one or all).
What happened next was they moved right on to 7.3.5 for the remainder of the Q&A with cherry picked questions and the same will happen with classic when they see fit to do so in 18-24 months maybe longer (depending on how fast they can get a full team hired to start the classic project).

[rasako]

Ion said they're not changing shit (thank God) so these threads will hopefully die off now. good riddance and hello vanilla WoW! Game wasn't too terribly balanced a year into the game, so I'm hoping they start on AQ patch or Naxx patch, if they start earlier I will have no problem playing but will wait to get too serious about it until then.

[Leetbeartank]

Guess what? Classic isn't for you. Don't have time to get a group together? No time to farm mats? Then Legion is what you're looking for.

What you consider "tidious" is what in part contributed to the rich community that vanilla spawned.

But I'm getting less worried the whingers who cry for QoL "improvements" because they don't have the time anymore will influence the classic servers. It's already been said Blizzard doesn't care how popular the servers are, they are going for the most authentic vanilla experience they can.

Holy shit the salt is palpable with this one. This definitely isn't black or white. It's certainly a grey area. There are things that would obviously improve classic wow (especially things they changed in later patches) that won't change the game much.

I played during classic and I want it to be the same experience... But there are minor things that could change and it wouldn't change the experience.

[bash the fash]

Lol at the idea that you're going to 'KILL' the 'social experience' of vanilla by, for instance, not making black lotus impossible to get

[Deficineiron]

I did play Vanilla and am far from clueless. Your categorization of people shows what type of person you are.

You guys get way too heated over the implementation of this. It will be what it will be. This post shows as much ignorance as basically the whole community has at this point. NO ONE knows what it's going to be like and EVERY opinion is valid on how people want to experience classic.

always good to see the blue key phrase on this topic used here in-context. 'experience classic' might seem like 'play classic the way classic is/was and therefore experience it' but has gotten a concept change to 'any change i want is valid and if implemented I can still experience classic.'

every opinion is also valid on what feels classic to any given person. they could implement pet battles and if it 'feels classic' they are covered.

when I started seeing these subjective terms thrown about by multiple blues, alarms went off.

[ComputerNerd]

Which original experience?

Is it before or after Maraudon/Gurubashi were added? Should people be allowed to toggle their helms & cloaks?

Should it be before battlegrounds where the only pvp is wpvp/gurubashi or is 12 hour AV "original"?

Is the original experience before/after the addition of more raids than MC?

Are Kazzak/Azuregos the only world bosses, or are Dragons of Nightmare also part of the original experience, or is it before they added world bosses?

Are all of the original holidays part of it?

Is AQ20/40 part of it or should they only do before? How about Naxx?

Is the original experience before or after they revamped the talent tree for Druids/Hunters/Warlocks/Warriors?

That's the problem with saying you want the "original experience" when vanilla covered a period of 2+ years. There were a lot of revamps QoL improvements added during that time that I think a lot of people forget about, which a lot of purists will argue against, but they were part of vanilla. So which version of vanilla is the "original experience"?

That is a good point.
Patch progression is more than just raid or dungeon content.
They came with a lot of other changes too, some of which had an impact on other content.
There is no consistent experience with the old patch progression.

[Daffan]

Ion said they're not changing shit (thank God) so these threads will hopefully die off now. good riddance and hello vanilla WoW! Game wasn't too terribly balanced a year into the game, so I'm hoping they start on AQ patch or Naxx patch, if they start earlier I will have no problem playing but will wait to get too serious about it until then.

Yeah I hope they start at 1.12.1 patch so we can steamroll MC and BWL with 30 min speed runs, 45 min with progressive 1.12.1. lewl best design evaaa

[Doctor Funkenstein]

Personally I just find it outright hilarious how so many people have convinced themselves that they really wanted a "vanilla server" to begin with. When all it was was a rationalization for why they were cheapskates using free third-party servers. It really, truly, deeply is hilarious.

Sure, there's an absolutely miniscule number of players who genuinely desired it -- they were the ones who actually played the "retail" version that way, but only sticking to vanilla content and refusing to use BC+ gear when they raided the old raids and whatnot -- but they were so far and few between that they died out in no time at all.

I just can't wait to watch how hard this burns to the ground.

[BetrayedOf52]

The same thousands of people who use forums are the same people smart enough to get a P server up and play it vanilla the way it use to be, and those are the opinions you see the most. The MILLIONS that Activision blizzard hope play the game, don't read forums daily or post what they hope to see. We are such a small % on here. The fact people think blizzard will re release with no QOL changes or graphics tweaks.. and hope to make the millions and millions Activision blizzard has probably demanded from the dev team is just silly.

[Mormolyce]

Perhaps this was Blizzard's cunning plan to finally get the Vanilla server crowd off their back. Announce Classic and watch the community tear itself apart disagreeing over every little thing.

Divide and conquer.

[Nefastus]

I think that some sort of B2P revenue model where you buy the game for $20 (U.S.) and then can play it without any further subscription would be profitable for them. It would need to be tied to a Battle.net account but that doesn't necessarily mean it requires a subscription. I could see them doing something like B2P to start and a yearly renewal fee of $15-$20 bucks just for maintenance costs, support and whatever. Everyone seems to assume a monthly fee and I can understand that. But there's no reason it has to be monthly. It could be for a quarter, half-year or whatever.

Completely free? That's not really Blizzard's way. I don't have anything to say about private servers because they're irrelevant as a discussion topic on this site.

I would be careful about tossing around F2P with respect to this. For many that implies a store for items and that's a can of worms that they shouldn't open except for perhaps plushy toys or something. There's going to be enough problems with this without opening up that Pandora's Box.

But given the heavy interest in it, a B2P model with a very modest yearly renewal would keep the game funded at a break-even or mildly profitable level likely forever.

Hum, good point, F2P is dangerous in the sense its a good excuse to fill the game with microtransactions. The buy to play is interesting but I don't know how some would react about buying the same game again. A cheaper sub wouldn't be bad either.

Well, overall I think your idea of B2P is actually the best. Buy the game once, play it as much as you want, perhaps a cheap fee as you sugested. I mean, its not like they have to create stuff for these servers, once they are ready they are ready right. Put the servers in the patch before the TBC pre-patch (with the new talents) and it should be good enough I guess. All raids and every classic feature would be there.

I read some sugestions of progressive patchs but I don't know if that would work. Patches in classic were pretty messy and that would probably delay the classic servers a lot.

[Deficineiron]

The same thousands of people who use forums are the same people smart enough to get a P server up and play it vanilla the way it use to be, and those are the opinions you see the most. The MILLIONS that Activision blizzard hope play the game, don't read forums daily or post what they hope to see. We are such a small % on here. The fact people think blizzard will re release with no QOL changes or graphics tweaks.. and hope to make the millions and millions Activision blizzard has probably demanded from the dev team is just silly.

Post of the Day award for this. Common sense business. This game is mainly for the former players betrayed notes. they will make the classic community feel listened to, but the big potential revenue question depends on formers who don't use ps/forums/etc.

[Deleted]

Revenue is non important. Only how succesful as an experiment it is perceived, and the metrics, while sometimes correlated aren't as binary as profitable or not.

Now back to the QoL changes, someone has a good summary what people are asking for ? I had already read flying mounts (removes any possible positive or negative player encounters), LFD (removes the need to work towards a social network that provides group opportunities) or the "schrodinger black lotus" (populates the areas, creates conflict, not everyone can be self-sufficient when it comes to farming mats, less efficients ways of farming have to be used which in return more people are populating the world rather than the cities).

- - - Updated - - -

Personally I just find it outright hilarious how so many people have convinced themselves that they really wanted a "vanilla server" to begin with. When all it was was a rationalization for why they were cheapskates using free third-party servers. It really, truly, deeply is hilarious.

Sure, there's an absolutely miniscule number of players who genuinely desired it -- they were the ones who actually played the "retail" version that way, but only sticking to vanilla content and refusing to use BC+ gear when they raided the old raids and whatnot -- but they were so far and few between that they died out in no time at all.

I just can't wait to watch how hard this burns to the ground.

To be blunt, the only valuable lesson that comes from this post is that gross-generalization make that person look intellectually-defective.