Do you think Classic will effect Expansion 9

[Elias01]

Here is my prediction or facts of the future as I call it:

Initial burst of people will play classic, everybody will enjoy themself. The population of wow2 will be lower. Than it goes perhaps 1 months. The population of classic wow is now declining, people now understand how limited the game is and how slow everything really is.
People quickly understand why the demand for LFG and faster progression was a thing in wow2. People are more impatient and expect gratification every single day to stay interested. Classic cannot deliver this, everything is a slow process.

Classic will come to a steady population and it will have increased interests once new stuff comes out, primarily raids since classic really didn't offered anything else.

Once wow2 expansion comes out, classic will be a dead game til people get bored of wow2 again, once they done the 1 thing they like 1 million times.
Story will continue the same path forever. Up and down.

Forums will be flooded with "can we get this and that, this make me sad, this make unhappy" only now it will about 2 games instead of 1.

TLDR;

patch 8.2>classic>Patch 8.2>new content classic>patch 8.3>new content classic>patch 8.3>new content classic>patch 9.0>TBC comes out>patch9.1>TBC content>patch 9.1>tbc content>patch 9.2 etc etc etc etc etc

I have better idea. People will play classic and when new conte t hits moder wow thwy go play there. Do 1 or 2 quick lfg dungeons, finish few world q and story line and quit. Go back to play classic till new content hits modern wow. Also you asume classic will be played only by modern wow playerbase which isnt true. Many what want classic do not play moder wow. And modern wow is played by minoryti now. If you didilnt notice majority of players have quit playing modern wow.

[Irian]

I'm surprised at how many people voted no. They've practically said the opposite.

Yeah exp 9 has been in development likely since Legion, but at the same time there's a ton of room for changes and tweaks to be made. Blizzard is a very reactive company, too much so at times. If Classic is hugely successful they will absolutely try to figure out why and what they can do to recreate that kind of passion in the next expansion.

[Lei]

I wonder if people will play vanilla just to protest against retail. Like making a statement. I'm close to doing this tbh. And if enough people do this, then maybe...? But seeing how the sub is shared, I kinda think they don't give a fuck as long as subs are paid.
Vanilla is alluring in a way. I know what to expect from that game. No bad surprises. If they really go forward with bc and wotlk legacy servers, that'd be my dream. You know what ot expect, you know what NOT to expect (tokens, myriad of shop mounts/pets, no corruption, no overcomplicated rental systems and trying to reinvent the wheel bullshit, no sharding, no crz.). It gives safety. At this point I'm legit scared what they cook up as the next expansion.

And then the next question (or worry) is that WHICH part of vanilla would they want to bring over? My gut says not the fun stuff but the most tedious ones: farming, slowing down people etc. Not sure if that's what retail needs.

[huth]

I'm surprised at how many people voted no. They've practically said the opposite.

Yeah exp 9 has been in development likely since Legion, but at the same time there's a ton of room for changes and tweaks to be made. Blizzard is a very reactive company, too much so at times. If Classic is hugely successful they will absolutely try to figure out why and what they can do to recreate that kind of passion in the next expansion.

And by the time that can be effectively measured and thought about, 9.0 is likely to already be in beta. You need to keep timeframes in mind.

Blizzard is reactive, not fast. They actually have pretty long dev cycles preventing them from doing the very thing you talk about.

[Relapses]

I'm surprised at how many people voted no. They've practically said the opposite.

Yeah exp 9 has been in development likely since Legion, but at the same time there's a ton of room for changes and tweaks to be made. Blizzard is a very reactive company, too much so at times. If Classic is hugely successful they will absolutely try to figure out why and what they can do to recreate that kind of passion in the next expansion.

Thanks for your clearly insider analysis of Blizzard's internal development dynamics. It's great that there are so many Blizzard employees on this forum willing to share with us how the company works behind closed doors!

[Calfredd]

Thanks for your clearly insider analysis of Blizzard's internal development dynamics. It's great that there are so many Blizzard employees on this forum willing to share with us how the company works behind closed doors!

Well history is on his side but huth's post, which is above yours, also brings up another good point.

[Elias01]

And by the time that can be effectively measured and thought about, 9.0 is likely to already be in beta. You need to keep timeframes in mind.

Blizzard is reactive, not fast. They actually have pretty long dev cycles preventing them from doing the very thing you talk about.

Yes but deactivating lfr, lfg, flying etc is something what can be swith off on fly.

[Relapses]

Well history is on his side but huth's post, which is above yours, also brings up another good point.

@huth's post is an obvious statement of fact. I'm just poking fun at the armchair developers on this forum who love to pretend they've figured everything out.

[Cosmic Janitor]

This only applies if you expect to experience 100% of all wow content. Which if you play casualy you should not expect that. I jave job, gf and plan to wotkout again. You think i cant play classic when i have less time to play? Oh yeah i can totaly play it but i dont ezpect to experinece everything and get top gear. And thats how it should be. If you feel entilted to game content be accessible for you regardless of time invetment than you are not gamer.

The premise of my post was obviously that everyone stops playing the current live version as part of one extreme. If you actually read past the first sentence you will see that I constructed two extreme scenarios, one where eveyone drops current wow and one where no one gives a shit about classic, both resulting in either almost total adaption of classic systems or none at all respectively.

I know this triggers the classic crowd to no end (hence why I'm forced to actually explain it), but there will be ALOT of people that simply won't find they can spend their time worthwhile in classic due to time constraints. Pissing about the barrens for 3 weeks because you play a couple of hours per week at most will not grab alot of people. Certainly not long term.

That is where the hyperbolic quip about everyone quitting their job comes into play. There is no way the first extrem case becomes a reality. The other case that nothing will change has at least some basis in reality, but is not set in stone either. That is highlighted in the last part where I aknowledge that there is a - albeit small - chance that classic will turn into a major success and we will see some substantial changes. As others have said though, the chances are that current wow might become even more bold with changes away from classic wow, now that they can just send people back to classic if they want something more traditional.

[Mendzia]

I really doubt but it would be awesome.

[Lei]

Hm. What would you (collective you) reintroduce into retail SPECIFICALLY from vanilla tho? I can't think of anything that was specific to vanilla and were not in other expansions as well.

[Alex86el]

the only things they should copy from Vanilla are:

The approach to dungeons.
It was a serious thing. you had to be careful.
The warriors had to play piano on the keyboard just to be decent 5man tanks.
No aoe pull, aoe tank, aoe dps. You even see this on mythics ffs.

The lack of teleports.
It made the world more alive, and more ...gankable.

The lack of flying mounts. Same.
Plus it made the world feel much bigger, mysterious, and challenging.

The lack of LFG/LFR.
The current mentality of no talking whatsoever... and rushing everything.
I hate that.

They could replace the LFG with a city board.
To avoid overcrowding, there would be a few boards around the city. Like one in every district, for example.
You place an add, which is removed after you log off, or form a full party.
The only thing you could write is two lines of whatever text you like.
No dropdown menus, request invite buttons, class roles, etc.
The only thing a browsing player would be allowed to do is click to whisper a person in your group.
Basically, a tidy LFG system, without the spam and super-fast-scrolling-text in the chat.

I dont miss the old honor system.
The honor decay was sadistic at best.

And i know theres no going back, but i do miss when everyone had normal, lore abiding mounts.
and not giant out of place monstrocities.

And the fact that there were no quest indicators.
So you had to actually read the quest, look around, and ask a lot.
This cant work however, since everyone will go ezmode and get an addon for it.

I do think that currently classes have WAAAY too many skills.
Especially the powerful cooldowns. Wtf they got a cooldown fetish over there.
But the Vanilla situation of just spamming one skill, three if you were lucky, was also crap.
A middle groud would be best.
But at least vanilla didnt lack in flavor and RP. Lock picking, poisons, reagents, arrows, feeding pets, that was pleasant.

Professions were ...relativelly.. useful. For WoW standards.

Also, that i was allowed to progress on my own pace, slow or fast.
Without blackmailing mechanics, with a must-do-minimum and maximum-allowed progression per "time".
Only there to tell you how often to login and what to do while in.
Which is the same unchallenging thing repeated 100 times.
Yeah i'm talking about dailies, weeklies, world quests, profession cooldowns, etc.

The old, hourly day/night cycle.
I honestly cannot remember the last time i saw WoW in daylight.
I remember it was 10 times more beautiful.
Sadly, its been a few expansions now, that it's day/night cycle follows real life. And that sucks big time.


There were also better things added after vanilla though.
For example..
Barber shop. I play an RPG damn it, i want to change my hair and stuff.
Transmog. Nothing broke my immersion more than watching 100 people with roughly the same gear. I just got reminded i was in a computer game every time.
Heroics and Challenge modes. Mythics are nice, and harder.. but having practically no ceiling is tiring to the mind as a concept.
On the first you tunnelvision your goal and get super excited when you achieve it.
While with mythics you're like.. oh good, now let's up it +1 and try again. OK good, lets +1 some more... Not as exciting.
Raids... Lets be honest... Todays raiders would steamroll old raids. Only thing hard about them was coordinating 40 people.
World design like in WoD and Timeless isle. With actually-hidden actual-treasures, urging you to explore and have pointless fun.
The addition of actually-challenging platform/agility puzzles would be an incredible addition as well. There were a couple toddler-level such puzzles in MoP/WoD/Legion.. but nothing noteworthy.
The mini pet battles. While i dont participate, i like that they are in the game.
And of course, dwarf shamans and troll druids.
The better graphics as well.

[huth]

Yes but deactivating lfr, lfg, flying etc is something what can be swith off on fly.

Really now? Forgotten WoD No Flight debacle already?

LfR and LfG are similarly unlikely to garner much love form being removed.

[Cosmic Janitor]

Hm. What would you (collective you) reintroduce into retail SPECIFICALLY from vanilla tho? I can't think of anything that was specific to vanilla and were not in other expansions as well.

I think the idea here is not to reimplement specific systems or features back into the current game (at least not for the most part), but instead apply some principles of game design that were used back then.

An extreme example would be that they could make the journey more important than the destination. They could make leveling a way longer experience, maybe even allow only a soft cap to be reached in the first couple of months, instead of focusing everything purely on the endgame systems of the expansion. That is essentially all that WoW was at the time of classic, alot of leveling in the beginning and they weren't even sure what the endgame would be at release. Of course that is highly unlikely, but it serves as an example of how different philosophies could be used compared to now.

[Lei]

I think the idea here is not to reimplement specific systems or features back into the current game (at least not for the most part), but instead apply some principles of game design that were used back then.

An extreme example would be that they could make the journey more important than the destination. They could make leveling a way longer experience, maybe even allow only a soft cap to be reached in the first couple of months, instead of focusing everything purely on the endgame systems of the expansion. That is essentially all that WoW was at the time of classic, alot of leveling in the beginning and they weren't even sure what the endgame would be at release. Of course that is highly unlikely, but it serves as an example of how different philosophies could be used compared to now.

People have to remember that vanilla wow was mainly an experiment. And the devs back then were surprised that it worked. And there were what? 50 devs working on wow. Now we ha a multibillion dollar company with twohundred-something mouths to feed. Players were so different back then. The gaming industry was completely different. I'm not sure it would work. Classic will work (if it will work) because it is in a time bubble. Slower leveling. Hm. Maybe if they do something incredible with questing itself. Slowing current expansion leveling down jsut the sake of slowing it down and because it worked in vanilla would probably end with a sad story. There are official statistics about vanilla and it has a part where it says not many people got to even level 20, let alone max level.
There are better examples in other expansions to look at when it comes to endgame content imho.

[Zuben]

No, I think Classic will be niche in the end. They tried to make things harder in Cataclysm and the larger playerbase didn't react well to it.

[Popastique]

Simple thought experiment. Do you think the potential popularity of Classic WoW will affect the game direction of expansions to come. Of course this is a loaded subject. This could be everything to making leveling more difficult to re-arranging the loot structure. The ultimately question however, is do you think retail might try to emulate Vanilla again at some point?

Popularity and Hype due to Nostalgia are 2 different things. The main question is how much of that hype will remain 1-2 months after WoW Classic releases. Though regarding your question - No, Blizzard won't make Retail more time consuming in terms of leveling, and definitely no changes to loot structure.

[Cabbe]

Many seem to get expansion 9 (10.0) and 9.0 (the upcoming expansion 8, the one after BfA) mixed up.

I think that it might rub off on expansion 9, if Classic ends up popular enough, though I don't think it would change retail's current trajectory as much as some probably think or hope for. It might make the team and the people working on retail realize that some very major aspects of what makes an MMORPG and actual MMORPG have gone missing over the years. I wouldn't expect them to revert many of those drastic systems changes that gradually turned the game into whatever it is nowadays.

[Irian]

And by the time that can be effectively measured and thought about, 9.0 is likely to already be in beta. You need to keep timeframes in mind.

Blizzard is reactive, not fast. They actually have pretty long dev cycles preventing them from doing the very thing you talk about.

I don't mean launch, don't get me wrong. I figure launch won't show a sign of it, but 9.1 or 9.2 maybe.

I don't personally think we'll actually really be able to make direct correlations, though. At best they'll probably take some lesson from this like "pandering to nostalgia brings back players!"
...and they'd probably be right.

Thanks for your clearly insider analysis of Blizzard's internal development dynamics. It's great that there are so many Blizzard employees on this forum willing to share with us how the company works behind closed doors!

What is even the point of this post?

People are voicing opinions, I'm voicing a response of mild surprise that people think that way. I'm sorry I apparently hurt your feelings enough that you feel the need to voice passive-aggressive nonsense.
Maybe forums aren't the place for you if you can't handle people trying to discuss topics.

[Wyrt]

Meh, can't get worse than BfA.