What If... They SKIP BC?

[riptal]

Yet another who has forgotten that WoW became as popular as it did in part BECAUSE it was the casual alternative to other MMOs like UO and Runescape.

No, no and no! Wow became as popular during WotLK because retail and TBC was that popular and people wanted the story of Lich king to be told. The popularity start to fade at the end of WotLK… when tons of players realised that Wow was not the same anymore. They tried to save it with CATA difficulty being raised… But all those Wrath babies destroyed it!

[Dergiab]

QUOTE from Blizz:
"When new items are added to loot tables, you’re generally seeing a deliberate effort to provide catch-up gear and/or to provide new goals for players who had exhausted an existing reward structure. For example, in original WoW, items were added to give players a way to quickly prepare for Ahn’Qiraj without having to spend months in Molten Core and Blackwing Lair."

Source: https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wo...classic/160757

This proves Blizz added items intedned as catch-up mechanic during vanilla. There were different sources than dungeon sets. For example reputations.

That's updated dungeon drops though, not Tier 0.5.

Actually that makes T0.5 even worse to spend time on, why bother that amount of time and resources to get gear slightly better to equal of what you can get through simple dungeon drops, if your intention is to gear up for raids?

[lionofwar87]

In my opinion, BC is a 'side story' and going to another planet so early in the life of an MMO was probably a mistake (don't get me wrong I love BC)...

What if Blizzard changed it up a bit. What if after Classic; they move straight to Wrath? BUT... Instead of grinding it out to 70 or 80 they introduce some other type of time constraint and leave us at 60... And never introduce flying mounts; or dungeon finder... Obviously a few aspects would have to be changed, places that require flying, etc.

So Wrath would just end up being a really long extension of Classic, basically.

I know demons are central to the Warcraft story, but to me it just feels like Blizzard went about it all wrong.

Im totally okay with skipping BC. Other than first going through the portal, I have no fond memories if that expansion.

Personally, I think flying mounts ruined the game.

[Apexis]

Another speculation and giving my opinion on the direction of content going forward in Classic thread. Seriously, instead of speculating on what might happen, that we do not know is going to happen, would be a more prudent way to cause less strife, not more of it.

You are assuming there is going to be more than what is currently. Blizzard has given zero indication they are going anywhere other than where they are going to as far as phase 6. Blizzard is not going to dump a bunch of time and money on content that may or may not have a massive following in 6 months to a year from now. We have no idea at this point whether they want to entertain the idea of doing both BC and Wrath. They might have talked about doing so in passing or asked the player base for their input. Though Blizzard has not committed to anything more than they have already committed to in regards to Classic.

I think you and others need to see the much bigger picture here. For Blizzard, Classic was a sound marketing point. They get some older players to come back to the game. Many are enjoying their time and others are simply falling to the waste side. The beauty of this marketing is the surge of people that have tried Classic, though they decided it was just not their cup of tea. However, the surge of people I have seen questing through the various stage of content, since Classic release, has been a really good shot in the arm for retail as well. The entire world is buzzing with new life to the level I have not witnessed since the first part of Draenor.

It is amazing what Blizzard has done for both sides of this game. I really can't see Blizzard wanting to splits this baby 3 or 4 different ways. The idea of having people so spread out throughout various stages of content is not going to make for a healthy environment and community. One thing is for sure, if Blizzard is going to do any more than they currently are with Classic, they will be releasing that information at Blizzcon. For all we know, Blizzard might take retail back to ground zero and work its way through developing all the content they never finished developing throughout Vanilla and each expansion after that, which would make perfect sense given the tech they are applying to RAF from 8.2.5 forward and would make more sense than splitting this baby 3 or 4 different ways.

[Will]

TBC was basically vanilla perfected before they started catering to casuals in Wrath and altered how the game worked.
The only part of TBC I disliked was some of the lore and PVP.

Making BGs useless and only focusing on Arenas, adding resillience thus making PVE gear useless, and making the PvP titles unobtainable is all stuff I really disliked about TBC.
The rest though was good though, lots of new gameplay additions without compromising the old.

Why do people keep saying they made BGs useless? I never did much arena and I still felt competitive. Without arena you could still buy the previous season's gladiator set with honor.

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No, no and no! Wow became as popular during WotLK because retail and TBC was that popular and people wanted the story of Lich king to be told. The popularity start to fade at the end of WotLK… when tons of players realised that Wow was not the same anymore. They tried to save it with CATA difficulty being raised… But all those Wrath babies destroyed it!

Please stop spreading falsehoods around. We all know the game started to nosedive about a month or so into Cata. Vanilla didn't have a rampant population until a few months before TBC, when suddenly it started to explode, and this growth continued throughout TBC. The expansion so many people cite as 'ruined the game' with its catch up gear and flying mounts apparently appealed to the larger demographic.

The accessibility features did, in fact, make the game more popular. It's easier to deny this fact because you feel like your high end content is no longer an exclusive province, but that doesn't change the facts. There were also plenty of hard encounters in WotLK, Alagalon, Yogg 0, Lich King HC, heck, a lot of the 25 player hard modes were a good challenge.

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I really can't see Blizzard wanting to splits this baby 3 or 4 different ways.

It's not as big a deal as it sounds. You have less servers, but spread out across the original trilogy and retail. Even split 4 ways, there'd still be enough players remaining to populate at least one server of each type from vanilla, tbc, wrath and retail.

[Gref]

forget bc or wotlk, blizzard should stay true to their game design but simply move on in an alternate universe. Maybe a universe where garrosh becomes the best warchief horde has ever had.

[Will]

@TerrisT

- cross-server LFG (server LFG was ok)
LFG was added in TBC and was just a group interface. You're thinking of LFD, which was added in the ICC patch. LFD was always cross server from day 1.
- too many world quests
Weren't added until Legion and there weren't too many. Legion's popularity attests to the reception of the world quest system.
- epic item' endless grinding for ressource
You mean AP, right? It's OK; at least it gave people reason to log in and mix up types of content

[Appelgren]

My classic nostalgia ran out a few days ago. The good parts dont outweigh the bad parts at this point.
If and when TBC was introduced I might of get a little nostalgia kick again and continue but not before then.

Back in BfA preparing for the worldbreaker mount and after that ill probably chill with WoW all together and play some other titles until
we get something new following Blizzcon.

Classic was fun tho. A nice trip down memory lane

[Will]

I hate to break it to everyone here, but wow classic being released does not in any way confirm or ensure the re-release of bc/wrath or any other legacy servers for that matter. At best it makes the possibility somewhat less unreal, but that's that. Stop jumping to conclusions, for your own sakes.

That's not a good justification not to try. People who know basic economics and business studies are incredibly confident at this stage that we'll get TBC. Sure, it's not guaranteed, but it would make fantastic business sense.

--most legwork done already (blizz' admission)
--cost / manpower needed is less than classic (blizz' admission)
--lots of love for BC by community, lots of people and their friends who would rather play it than vanilla
--more players started in BC than in vanilla
--huge re-subscriber potential. Even if people resub for 1 month, still easy profit
--some folk are ok with classic forever like a museum piece, others will just quit, so this provides continuation for those who prefer the old design philosophy, without the uncertainty of classic+, but get bored after naxx
--Might ironically bring more people to classic vanilla too, provided they do the smart thing and make separate servers
--some of us raided in those days but not pvped. I pvped but didn't raid. I'd love to experience the raids as they were intended.

And the biggest reason of all:
--TBC classic could be released half way through expansion 9, effectively filling the bathtub of subscriber drops during the mid expansion lull, generating continuous hype. WotLK could do the same half way through expansion 10. (this of course assumes they continue the same expansion bi-annual model, which they might not. Nonetheless they still retain the potential to release old expacs strategically for huge sub revivals to fill drought periods).

[Kokolums]

In my opinion, BC is a 'side story' and going to another planet so early in the life of an MMO was probably a mistake (don't get me wrong I love BC)...

What if Blizzard changed it up a bit. What if after Classic; they move straight to Wrath? BUT... Instead of grinding it out to 70 or 80 they introduce some other type of time constraint and leave us at 60... And never introduce flying mounts; or dungeon finder... Obviously a few aspects would have to be changed, places that require flying, etc.

So Wrath would just end up being a really long extension of Classic, basically.

I know demons are central to the Warcraft story, but to me it just feels like Blizzard went about it all wrong.

BC is the HEART of the story. The story of Warcraft is all about the Dark Portal and all the horrors from another world that poured through it onto Azeroth. That is where the story began. Orcs vs Humans. I even suggested that the first film should have made the Dark Portal ITSELF the enemy, something that must be defeated. That would be the best intro to the story. It actually felt odd that vanilla's story didn't revolve around the Dark Portal, and made perfect sense we'd focus on it as early as xpac 1.

[Will]

No you are not looking at the relevant information. The key point is 1-2 millions growth per year for 48 months drastically stopped at the same time as an event happened. This event is a new expansion. Also a subscription lasts at least 1 month (1-2 months are enough to try the product) and somehow the growth flattened exactly around 1 month after the event. Like it couldnt be more obvious than that lol.
On top of it (if we look at the critics and leave the analysis alone), most of the things people dislike about retail wow has been introduced in WoTLK. A new annoying class, looking for group, death of social, old content totally irrelevant, different raid difficulties and... So you even have the forums to help you guess the obvious conclusion from the graph analysis lol.

That's not how it works. Let me use a really really dumbed down example to explain it to you.

Say there's a town where a car dealerships sets up shop, and sells cars to people in the town. Lets say the only model they offer is a sports car.
Lets say only 20% of the town's population have interest in sports cars.

Initially the car isn't well known so it doesn't sell well.

As it becomes better known and word of mouth gets around, reviews get out and people start to test drive / recommend the car, the people looking for a sports car start to buy it. The snowball effect starts once sports car fans start raving about how good it is. Some folks at this stage WANT to buy it, but they need to get some money or get rid of their existing car first. Regardless, numbers are still growing at this stage.

Eventually the majority of the market in this town for sports cars has been tapped. Sales numbers start to stagnate. Let us also say that this coincidentally happens around the same time the sports car maker releases a new SUV model.

A stupid person would go "Oh, sales figures for this car have stagnated, it must be the fault of them becoming more focused on SUVs!"

A smart person would look at the market, and say "no, its because the sports car market saturation in this town is as its highest. Most of the people who love sports cars already own one now, and they're happily driving them around, so the number of new buyers is quite low. Most of the other people in the town don't care about sports cars."

Obviously this is really simplistic and an economist would laugh at what I just typed, but I'm trying to keep it as basic as possible for you to understand. The fact subscriber numbers stopped growing as much in wrath as they did in BC does not magically mean Wrath flopped in comparison. It could, just could, in this case mean that the majority of folk who WoW caters and appealed to were now aware of the game and playing it, and therefore the number of people the game would appeal to who aren't yet aware of it is much MUCH less than it was during the TBC growth period. AKA, the market was far more tapped by WotLK.

Rival companies were also stepping up their game and releasing titles that were genuine competitors, and in general the MMO market was losing popularity to FPS and Moba type games. Again, this doesn't objectively mean WotLK failed, it just meant the market and times were changing. There's literally so many different potential factors at play, this is why market analysts study hard to become good at what they do. Yet "armchair experts" like yourself just sit down and draw simplistic parallels and proclaim you have it all figured out. It's really not that simple.

[clevin]

Altho you could say that WOTLK started the trend of accessibility and grind that retail has become (it's true), i think it wasn't as bad as it became in WoD (MoP was still ok).

Imo the process was gradual, but i think what made wow terrible are :

- cross-server LFG (server LFG was ok

We never had automated server only LFG. LFG started in 3.3. and ws from the get-go battlegroup-wide. Combined with the idea of daily heroic quests, they incentivized people to PUG over doing guild groups.... you wanted to get the daily if you could and it was faster for many people to use LFG.

[stomination]

In my opinion, BC is a 'side story' and going to another planet so early in the life of an MMO was probably a mistake (don't get me wrong I love BC)...

What if Blizzard changed it up a bit. What if after Classic; they move straight to Wrath? BUT... Instead of grinding it out to 70 or 80 they introduce some other type of time constraint and leave us at 60... And never introduce flying mounts; or dungeon finder... Obviously a few aspects would have to be changed, places that require flying, etc.

So Wrath would just end up being a really long extension of Classic, basically.

I know demons are central to the Warcraft story, but to me it just feels like Blizzard went about it all wrong.

The lich king only started doing stuff because the burning legion was weakened by us.

Honestly I rather they just make a diff story and keep the classic talents and class playstyle. Why go thru all the things that made most of us quit a second time.

[Relapses]

That's not how it works. Let me use a really really dumbed down example to explain it to you.

Say there's a town where a car dealerships sets up shop, and sells cars to people in the town. Lets say the only model they offer is a sports car.
Lets say only 20% of the town's population have interest in sports cars.

Initially the car isn't well known so it doesn't sell well.

As it becomes better known and word of mouth gets around, reviews get out and people start to test drive / recommend the car, the people looking for a sports car start to buy it. The snowball effect starts once sports car fans start raving about how good it is. Some folks at this stage WANT to buy it, but they need to get some money or get rid of their existing car first. Regardless, numbers are still growing at this stage.

Eventually the majority of the market in this town for sports cars has been tapped. Sales numbers start to stagnate. Let us also say that this coincidentally happens around the same time the sports car maker releases a new SUV model.

A stupid person would go "Oh, sales figures for this car have stagnated, it must be the fault of them becoming more focused on SUVs!"

A smart person would look at the market, and say "no, its because the sports car market saturation in this town is as its highest. Most of the people who love sports cars already own one now, and they're happily driving them around, so the number of new buyers is quite low. Most of the other people in the town don't care about sports cars."

Obviously this is really simplistic and an economist would laugh at what I just typed, but I'm trying to keep it as basic as possible for you to understand. The fact subscriber numbers stopped growing as much in wrath as they did in BC does not magically mean Wrath flopped in comparison. It could, just could, in this case mean that the majority of folk who WoW caters and appealed to were now aware of the game and playing it, and therefore the number of people the game would appeal to who aren't yet aware of it is much MUCH less than it was during the TBC growth period. AKA, the market was far more tapped by WotLK.

Rival companies were also stepping up their game and releasing titles that were genuine competitors, and in general the MMO market was losing popularity to FPS and Moba type games. Again, this doesn't objectively mean WotLK failed, it just meant the market and times were changing. There's literally so many different potential factors at play, this is why market analysts study hard to become good at what they do. Yet "armchair experts" like yourself just sit down and draw simplistic parallels and proclaim you have it all figured out. It's really not that simple.

Fantastic breakdown. I liked the sports car analogy.

[Alvito]

What if they don't make anymore and stop fracturing the player base

[Gurluas]

Why do people keep saying they made BGs useless? I never did much arena and I still felt competitive. Without arena you could still buy the previous season's gladiator set with honor.

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Yes...The previous season's, you weren't able to compete unless you did Arena.
All the best gear and stuff was locked behind Arenas which was bullshit.

They should instead have made BG and Arenas equal, never added Resilience and made pvp titles still obtainable.
The PvP side of things is where I dislike TBC...alongside some of the lore, for the rest TBC was amazing.

[erifwodahs]

Why skip something good ? They should have skipped classic.

TBH, not to word it like that, but well, TBC is very loyal to Classic mechanics, just everything is better (subjective ofc.) so I would agree, if we would skip something, we could have skipped classic instead. BUT, well, hopefully we are not skipping anything, so it is all cool.
I really would like TBC and WotLK, but splitting communities, I don't know if that is what blizz would like to do. I am pretty sure they could maintain some healthy levels of players in all expansions, maybe just limited types of realms

[cface]

That's not a good justification not to try. People who know basic economics and business studies are incredibly confident at this stage that we'll get TBC. Sure, it's not guaranteed, but it would make fantastic business sense.
...
--some of us raided in those days but not pvped. I pvped but didn't raid. I'd love to experience the raids as they were intended.
...

This hits me so much, I played and loved TBC, but still felt it was a wasted expansion for me since I barely saw any raid.
How did you feel about Wotlk? I just couldn't really like that expansion as much, my personal experience went downhill with it, and I even raided. Hopefully this time around I will like it, cause I can't really pinpoint why I disliked it compared to vanilla/tbc.

[Rigald]

Yes...The previous season's, you weren't able to compete unless you did Arena.
All the best gear and stuff was locked behind Arenas which was bullshit.

They should instead have made BG and Arenas equal, never added Resilience and made pvp titles still obtainable.
The PvP side of things is where I dislike TBC...alongside some of the lore, for the rest TBC was amazing.

It's easy to hate on Resilience if you are not a player that only does PvP

[Gurluas]

It's easy to hate on Resilience if you are not a player that only does PvP

Because instead of making PvP something where you fight against the other faction in the skirmishes...It was turned into a minigame where the gear you worked SO hard to obtain is utterly useless and you need to work for new gear.

As faulty as vanilla PvP was, the amazing moment when someone wearing a legendary came on the field and could overwhelm the enemy and save you was awe inspiring. Like when Uther came and saved Arthas at Hearthglen, I had amazing moments like that, especially in AV.

While with Resilience, if you don't have resilience you die extremely quickly to massive crits.
They should have either put resillience only on pvp trinkets or stuck to the vanilla model.