[speculation] Burning Crusade Servers in 2021

[Bhanzai]

I hope not. I still need to get to 60!

BC will probably happen end of 2021. No reason for it to too. It's an obvious cash cow. Especially now that blizzard knows how to make it happen it will probably take less time and effort.

[arkanon]

I gave you your figures and I called out your stubbornness - and you just hurl nothing but insults at me instead of rebutting my math or points.

Welcome to the ignore list.

What math? I did respond to your point directly - using 20 year old developmental costs is absolutely absurd, it makes no sense at all to use those estimates, as they are absolutely guaranteed to be extremely inaccurate. Again, this is a really simple case of someone making shit up - you claimed to know for a fact what the profit was for classic - a ridiculous claim to make. I asked you to support that, since i know you dont have access to any of the numbers. You said you dont need the numbers, because you use "algebra". When i crushed that argument, you moved to "well, back in the year 2000, it apparently cost this much to make vanilla". I responded to that by pointing out two HUGE flaws in your logic - 1) those costs are from 20 years ago, and you then went on to manipulate those numbers at will to fit your narrative. And 2) you still maintain the insane opinion that there was literally $0 developmental costs bringing classic to the market - something no sane person would think.

If you cant handle having your silly argument completely dismantled, dont pretend to have knowledge on subjects you very clearly have zero experience with. Asking for proof when someone makes a baseless claim isnt being stubborn, it is being sensible.

[SirCowdog]

You really think classic had zero development costs?

Going to try and inject some critical thinking and objectivity into this "discussion".

We know that remastering and re-creating Classic took quite a bit of time and effort from Blizzard. Largely due to not having all the original files, and having to bring old code and such up to working well on current tech. Obviously we don't know the exact costs of this, but we do know from the Q&A at Blizzcon that the reaction and popularity of Classic was much higher than they expected.

We also know(in an interview that I now can't find because google information pollution and overflow) that now that Blizzard has established the techniques and processes to remaster an old expansion, that further such projects would be much easier to implement. In addition(again in the Blizzcon Q&A), we know that Blizzard is not opposed to "Classic" TBC or WotLK servers. They just want to make sure it's done "correctly".

So...given all the factors I've just described, I think it's fair to say that(even if we don't know exact numbers) a TBC or WotLK release for classic wow would be a good investment in terms of dev time and money vs returns.

If you have some reason or evidence for why you think it WOULDN'T turn out this way, please elaborate.

EDIT: I found it in the reddit AMA.

We've done most of the hard work by bringing back 1.12 so progressing to Burning Crusade would be a lot easier for us. Our plan is to identify everything we need to do should we ever decide to go this route. We want to be sensitive to the desires of our players. Some may want BC and some may not. We'll be following the Classic community closely to help determine what our next steps should be.

[arkanon]

If you have some reason or evidence for why you think it WOULDN'T turn out this way, please elaborate.

EDIT: I found it in the reddit AMA.

We've done most of the hard work by bringing back 1.12 so progressing to Burning Crusade would be a lot easier for us. Our plan is to identify everything we need to do should we ever decide to go this route. We want to be sensitive to the desires of our players. Some may want BC and some may not. We'll be following the Classic community closely to help determine what our next steps should be.

I did not saying releasing TBC would not be a good idea, i have said multiple times i think it would be a great idea. I have also linked that same blue post numerous times as one factor that i believe would encourage them to do exactly that.

My issue comes from people who claim, as the person i was responding do did, that Classic wow had ZERO development costs because "it was already made". You need to appreciate that some people genuinely believe the classic team was just a couple of people who pulled a big lever and 'reactivated' vanilla wow. I know that for critical thinkers such as yourself, that is an absolutely absurd notion, but that is what is being discussed.

[SirCowdog]

I did not saying releasing TBC would not be a good idea, i have said multiple times i think it would be a great idea. I have also linked that same blue post numerous times as one factor that i believe would encourage them to do exactly that.

My issue comes from people who claim, as the person i was responding do did, that Classic wow had ZERO development costs because "it was already made". You need to appreciate that some people genuinely believe the classic team was just a couple of people who pulled a big lever and 'reactivated' vanilla wow. I know that for critical thinkers such as yourself, that is an absolutely absurd notion, but that is what is being discussed.

I admit I didn't want to sift through the entire thread to figure out the exact complaint. But if that's really what people think, those people are wrong. Classic took significant work to not only locate the old code(because Blizzard didn't archive it correctly), and then adapt it to modern server tech. Old code from LITERALLY almost two decades ago doesn't work the same way as modern programming. The hardware was different, the software language was different.

Now....maybe Classic TBC will be closer to "just flipping a switch", since they've got all the tools in place to speed up the process. But it's still going to take a lot of QA and bug fixing before it would run. When a developer says "This will be easier", we have to remember the scale of development time they're on. Classic was announced at Blizzcon 2017, and not released until 2019. Even if Classic TBC takes half the time, we're still talking something on the order of a year or so of development and QA.

Then there's things like buying and setting up the servers to host it, followed with support staff, and the lessons learned from things like the Layering fiasco. The idea that a project of this scale is fast, easy, or cheap is just.....wrong.

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

I admit I didn't want to sift through the entire thread to figure out the exact complaint. But if that's really what people think, those people are wrong. Classic took significant work to not only locate the old code(because Blizzard didn't archive it correctly), and then adapt it to modern server tech. Old code from LITERALLY almost two decades ago doesn't work the same way as modern programming. The hardware was different, the software language was different.

Now....maybe Classic TBC will be closer to "just flipping a switch", since they've got all the tools in place to speed up the process. But it's still going to take a lot of QA and bug fixing before it would run. When a developer says "This will be easier", we have to remember the scale of development time they're on. Classic was announced at Blizzcon 2017, and not released until 2019. Even if Classic TBC takes half the time, we're still talking something on the order of a year or so of development and QA.

Then there's things like buying and setting up the servers to host it, followed with support staff, and the lessons learned from things like the Layering fiasco. The idea that a project of this scale is fast, easy, or cheap is just.....wrong.

Tools are already in place, plus they know where they have the BC backups because they started keeping backups in BC.

[Relapses]

And who cares how spread out they are as long as they all have to pay their $15 a month to play?

Classic saw a huge surge in numbers there's no reason to expect any different if they did launch TBC servers

I find it ironic that a lot of Classic players' main objections to TBC servers is that it will "split the playerbase." As if Classic didn't have the same effect on retail, yet despite this is still doing well.

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

I find it ironic that a lot of Classic players' main objections to TBC servers is that it will "split the playerbase." As if Classic didn't have the same effect on retail, yet despite this is still doing well.

Probably a lot of people have secondary reasons. Just blaming "split the playerbase" is more generally palletable than "I don't want flight."

[pinkz]

I personally doubt that Blizzard would be foolish enough to pay for streamers to stream their product at this point (i could be wrong, but i just dont see it happening) however the second part is quite likely.

never said blizzard is doing it, i believe some of the streamers are duel hatting, again playing WOW, then oh switching to another game, which they do announce, some followers stop watching, however some follow. if anything the other companies may be paying them, in some instances a streamer has mentioned, oh its free, if you sign up now you get, oh look at the graphics, etc. etc. sign of sponsored play

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2021 sounds about right for whatever's coming next. Be it BC Classic or Classic+. Guessing we probably get Phase 4 around May/June, Phase 5 probably around the 1 year anniversary, and Phase 6 probably post-Blizzcon (where they'll announce their post-naxx plans) pre-new years.

And there will be something next. Even if the retention wasn't perfect, there's still the fact that subs went up by several million for Classic, and there's still a strong core playerbase.

Classic+ is shaky if retention is low, but I guarantee you they'll do something. Even if it's just dusting off the BC data and making that.

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Streamers were never going to stay and if you're basing Classic's success of variety streamers staying you made a big mistake.

Now the WoW-focused streamers? I guarantee you once they kill N'Zoth and clear a Horrific Vision they'll suddenly be back to hyping up Classic and hating on Retail.

not playing classic wow, so no mistakes, i just like to watch

some of the classic wow streamers are van wow and unauthorized server die hards do not dual hat into retail WOW BFA

[Dead Moose Fandango]

Eh. Played classic wow for a month or two. It was fun, but I'm over it. Might make it to three months for BC.

[valax]

I know wow is a fantasy game, but that doesn't mean you need to permanently live in a fantasy land. The exact same "classic subs were meant to shrink hard and fast from the very start" can be applied to any expansion release, including SL. You wouldnt apply the same logic though would you, because it doesnt fit your narrative.

Yes but actually no , If you noticed at first they had to constantly add new realms because they were filling up really fast and that's cool , I mean millions of player came back to this game which I think is good for both retail and classic.. but then people started to understand which kind of game they were playing , easy end game ... obnoxious world pvp, nothing much left other than farming gold and consumables , and blizzard knew that most of that hype crowd would eventually fall off after a couple months as people got to 60.. now there are one sided wasteland servers (and blizz is evilish clever offering paid transfers) TBC is the oh shit button if next expansion flops hard to bring back again those toursit crowd for the extra sub boost .
You can say it's the same for retail , with the exception they can improve and change stuff there , thing they can't in classic or tbc because "no changes" mentality so what's shitty will stay shitty .

[Autowand]

I find it ironic that a lot of Classic players' main objections to TBC servers is that it will "split the playerbase." As if Classic didn't have the same effect on retail, yet despite this is still doing well.

The indirect assumption that I'm a classic player would be incorrect, I prefer retail. While I did play classic for a couple of months, I didn't really have any interest in going back until a couple of days before it came out.

That being said, it IS a concern that even Blizzard themselves showed that they are aware of when they kept waiting to add servers to the classic game, implying that they knew a lot of players would leave after a month or two leaving the servers starved for players. You need players playing with other players in an MMO. You need players to have a stable economy. What is the limit if you add classic expansions? Will we one day have 9 versions of the game with each one sucking out a very tiny portion of an already dwindling population on each of the servers in those games? It wouldn't surprise me if Blizzard did do something like this, I just don't think it would be the correct answer to adding players to the game.

[Relapses]

The indirect assumption that I'm a classic player would be incorrect, I prefer retail. While I did play classic for a couple of months, I didn't really have any interest in going back until a couple of days before it came out.

That being said, it IS a concern that even Blizzard themselves showed that they are aware of when they kept waiting to add servers to the classic game, implying that they knew a lot of players would leave after a month or two leaving the servers starved for players. You need players playing with other players in an MMO. You need players to have a stable economy. What is the limit if you add classic expansions? Will we one day have 9 versions of the game with each one sucking out a very tiny portion of an already dwindling population on each of the servers in those games? It wouldn't surprise me if Blizzard did do something like this, I just don't think it would be the correct answer to adding players to the game.

Just like you can play both retail and Classic, you can also play Classic and... other versions of Classic. Blizzard may also release Seasonal Classic realms as well. So you could essentially choose to play on Classic (normal), reroll on a Classic Seasonal realm or transfer your level 60 to a new TBC realm. This would, to me, give players the most flexibility in playing what they want to play while still keeping the replay factor for Classic (Vanilla) high.

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

Honestly the big loser in the "split the playerbase" argument would be retail. Because releasing more classic versions means there's going to be players who disliked Vanilla that might now like BC, or might now like Wrath, and decide to split time between Retail and those expansions.

[SirCowdog]

TBC is the oh shit button if next expansion flops hard to bring back again those toursit crowd for the extra sub boost

This seems pretty accurate to me.

If the reception of Shadowlands is poor, launching TBC will give them time to course-correct retail.

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Honestly the big loser in the "split the playerbase" argument would be retail. Because releasing more classic versions means there's going to be players who disliked Vanilla that might now like BC, or might now like Wrath, and decide to split time between Retail and those expansions.

Given the disposable design of retail, I doubt TBC or WotLK would hurt it. It would just give players something to do between patches.

Splitting time between retail and classic is pretty much the intended design.

[Askyl]

What is not true? The steady decline of classic? If you don't think so you might be happy to be on one of the few really alive servers. The scan numbers show roughly 800k logged in characters in the last three weeks and only 250k different characters in the evening hours, which, if you count in that there were still multiple people playing multiple chars in that time, we are down to maybe 200k players which is a heavy decline, as even these numbers went down like 50% in the last month.

With releasing BC servers they would split that community even more and it would kill Classic servers.

Oh no, just like WoW always have been. Servers are a bit dull during holidays / new years. They're all back to full / high now =) And your addon stats aren't always correct.

[Devilyaki]

What about me classic + server herp a derp addhghjvf

[Pendragon]

OP should be permanently banned for the title. He knows what he's doing wording it like that. Scum.

[shise]

Should ban this thread already, that tittle is a clickbait, just like half of the news articles now a days lol

[klaps_05]

As long as Cataclysm and MOP eventually come, looks like even more fun ahead.