I understand WHY people love TBC, but....

[Zarator8]

Damn, according to this graph we're at like -30 million subscribers by now.

The part in grey is just speculation, but the colored part is actual data that you can easily check from other sources as well.

It takes some extreme ignorance to claim that TBC saw a dip in subs and WotLK saw a surge.

[Nak88]

TBC is coming either way so I dont understand why people decide to be upset about that part of wow. At that point we will have retail, classic & BC to play.

This. Everyone wins this way. I don't understand why all the debate and controversy...

If you want TBC like most people, we will play TBC/WotLK, Blizzard/Activision know that's very easy and sustained money.

If you want Classic+, go to retail and play Shadowlands.

If you want Classic Vanilla forever, stay in one of those perennial Classic servers.

Everyone will be happy.

[jackofwind]

Also no one really cared about those mounts and they didn't give you much prestige in the real Classic. If you had someone in T2-AQ40-Naxx gear standing next to some nub in blues with those mounts, no one would even pay attention to the mounts.

I don't know about that, it certainly wasn't my experience. Guilds broke up over the ZG mounts on my Vanilla server.

[Caperfin]

Damn, according to this graph we're at like -30 million subscribers by now.

Holy cow that WOTLK-era 11k subs.

[ihate2beapessimist]

TBC is a VERY good PVE game and sucks at everything else. If raiding was the primary thing you did in WoW you usually loved it. Everything I say past here doesn't matter to you, because TBC might be the best raid/pve game ever made for a "raiding is all that matters" player. If PVE wasn't your primary focus, you can easily view it as highly overrated and point out that it started many of the systems and things that would eventually destroy WoW as we knew it.

Flying destroyed world pvp. Instantly. Nothing more to say about that.

Arena gear/arena led to the changes that destroyed Alterac Valley. ALL players gravitated towards the honor per minute idea to get the resilience gear they needed to start arena, instead of just having fun. Take the mentally ill repeat rank 14 grinders and give that mindset to ALL the players and that is what BG's became. Keep in mind that AV was cleverly designed to get pve players into pvp and that is ceased to exist as intended in TBC and the playerbase became very split with pvp and pve players. This got worse every expansion and now players who used to all be one big, awesome community are split into little groups.

Professions mean very little in pvp because world pvp is dead. Why bother. Rocketboots could be used if I remember right in arena, but could backfire. Hand enchants I think could be used to, but it really didn't matter. I hated arena and tried to block out every time I would get myself or someone else the 1850 weapon. The rest was a waste of time. I also usually played double dps because running around a pole for a long time was awful.

Arena becomes the barometer for everything, due to a dumb rating that autistic kids and streamers who helped ruin WoW, can brag about as they run around a pole with a healer in most comps (other than spriest, rogue, mage). Very few comps are viable and the pvp is awful and the makers of the original WoW said arena was a mistake.
engadget.com/2009/11/13/blizzard-arenas-were-a-mistake/[/url]

The better arena got, the more classes all became the same, which breaks and ruins larger forms of pvp and the "fun factor" and uniqueness of classes. The original designers knew this would happen. Fast forward and we now have unkillable healers when crosshealing happens in a BG or a 1 v 1 happens due to every class having to all have the same CC and chains. PvP outside of 3 v 3 is now GARBAGE. Healers HAVE to be OP in all other scenarios, just so a failed esport can continue.

Segregation of the playerbase happens for the first time with Arena and Heroics. This was not that big a problem in TBC because you only had heroic dungeons and one difficulty of raids. Now we have LFR, normal, heroic, mythic, mythic plus. It's just stupid.

Dailies start as a big thing in TBC. This is what happens when you break world pvp and segregate the playerbase to cater to the "eltiist jerks" (who now run WoW btw). You need dumbed down repeatable, zombie like content for the "casuals" or really nice people who weren't that great mechanically, who actually have very little to do in modern WoW. They eventually get bored/quit and all you are left with in the modern game is LFR/daily zombies who listen to streamers they are so bored and the 1 percent that no one could stand to be around in vanilla.

In vanilla these mechanically deficient players could be "carried" but no one said carried because people weren't all aholes and they could contribute big time to a guild through professions, farming, running 5 mans and gearing up offtanks and dps. They could also pvp with you, world pvp, have consumables that gave them an edge etc. Modern WoW literally separates you from people you grew up playing this game with and rewards you for abandoning them with progression. Vanilla never did that.

People claim vanilla was not casual friendly. That's complete BS. It had the most to do for casual players of any expansion. Everything took time, but you always had something to do.

TLDR. TBC introduced too many catch up systems, flying killed world pvp, arena killed classes being unique and broke all other forums of pvp except 3 v 3, segregation of pve content got out of control eventually and further led to class homogenization, it was the first implemenation of a group finder (no one used it), dailies replaced organic pvp and farming content, old world is now useless.

TBC doomers are so cute.

- - - Updated - - -

Yea but they were just small side/easter egg kinda things. Almost zero design was put behind them aside from just adding a recolored mount that was already in game into a drop table, or adding a few lines of text to a NPC.

Also no one really cared about those mounts and they didn't give you much prestige in the real Classic. If you had someone in T2-AQ40-Naxx gear standing next to some nub in blues with those mounts, no one would even pay attention to the mounts.

TBC changed that by making grinding mounts into an actual content with that island and its dailies in Shadowmoon and it only got worse after that. Mounts started appearing as exalted rewards with factions, from hard grinds, rewards from achies once they were introduced.

You expose yourself when you say things like "the real Classic"

[Whoopax]

TBC will 100% be failure like it is on private servers.

[TheUnrealDonald2]

Imho the gameplay arguments are quite valid - destruction of world PVP and introduction of the disease named "arenas", in particular.

However, even more so than any of this - I just can't freaking stand spacegoats and the purple alien theme of everything in that expansion. The theme is just absolutely, entirely unappealing to me. No matter how good or bad the gameplay was/is, I didn't, and never will enjoy BC just because of its setting.

[Powerogue]

What I can glean from this thread is there is no consensus whatsoever.

We've literally got a spectrum from "BC was the worst expansion I hated every second of it" to "I masturbate to the thought of it every night in front of my Illidan shrine."

I still don't support it and would get more out of just expanding timewalking. Unlike vanilla, the quests, the rep grinds, the dungeons and raids, are all still in the game exactly as they were. If I wanted to see them again, I can. If I had enough likeminded friends I could have us all lock our characters at 70 and do it at that level, if not the same class balance. Vanilla was the one and only exception to this.

If we keep doing this, eventually we will cut our WoW population into 1/8ths. (Maybe 1/7ths, disregarding the one guy gleefully running around his garrison as a rounding error)

[Niwes]

i loved TBC for the class design (and the raids and dungeons). i loved classic for everything else.

gimme classic with TBC class design (and dungeons and raids from both games) and i will never leave that servers for any game or xpac.

[Craaazyyy]

TBC will 100% be failure like it is on private servers.

bc isn't a failure on pservers, it's just that BC pservers are notoriously buggy and shitty

[NineSpine]

bc isn't a failure on pservers, it's just that BC pservers are notoriously buggy and shitty

It's almost as if the interest was never there to make a solid one...

[bigbleach]

TBC is a VERY good PVE game and sucks at everything else. If raiding was the primary thing you did in WoW you usually loved it. Everything I say past here doesn't matter to you, because TBC might be the best raid/pve game ever made for a "raiding is all that matters" player. If PVE wasn't your primary focus, you can easily view it as highly overrated and point out that it started many of the systems and things that would eventually destroy WoW as we knew it.

Flying destroyed world pvp. Instantly. Nothing more to say about that.

Arena gear/arena led to the changes that destroyed Alterac Valley. ALL players gravitated towards the honor per minute idea to get the resilience gear they needed to start arena, instead of just having fun. Take the mentally ill repeat rank 14 grinders and give that mindset to ALL the players and that is what BG's became. Keep in mind that AV was cleverly designed to get pve players into pvp and that is ceased to exist as intended in TBC and the playerbase became very split with pvp and pve players. This got worse every expansion and now players who used to all be one big, awesome community are split into little groups.

Professions mean very little in pvp because world pvp is dead. Why bother. Rocketboots could be used if I remember right in arena, but could backfire. Hand enchants I think could be used to, but it really didn't matter. I hated arena and tried to block out every time I would get myself or someone else the 1850 weapon. The rest was a waste of time. I also usually played double dps because running around a pole for a long time was awful.

Arena becomes the barometer for everything, due to a dumb rating that autistic kids and streamers who helped ruin WoW, can brag about as they run around a pole with a healer in most comps (other than spriest, rogue, mage). Very few comps are viable and the pvp is awful and the makers of the original WoW said arena was a mistake.
engadget.com/2009/11/13/blizzard-arenas-were-a-mistake/[/url]

The better arena got, the more classes all became the same, which breaks and ruins larger forms of pvp and the "fun factor" and uniqueness of classes. The original designers knew this would happen. Fast forward and we now have unkillable healers when crosshealing happens in a BG or a 1 v 1 happens due to every class having to all have the same CC and chains. PvP outside of 3 v 3 is now GARBAGE. Healers HAVE to be OP in all other scenarios, just so a failed esport can continue.

Segregation of the playerbase happens for the first time with Arena and Heroics. This was not that big a problem in TBC because you only had heroic dungeons and one difficulty of raids. Now we have LFR, normal, heroic, mythic, mythic plus. It's just stupid.

Dailies start as a big thing in TBC. This is what happens when you break world pvp and segregate the playerbase to cater to the "eltiist jerks" (who now run WoW btw). You need dumbed down repeatable, zombie like content for the "casuals" or really nice people who weren't that great mechanically, who actually have very little to do in modern WoW. They eventually get bored/quit and all you are left with in the modern game is LFR/daily zombies who listen to streamers they are so bored and the 1 percent that no one could stand to be around in vanilla.

In vanilla these mechanically deficient players could be "carried" but no one said carried because people weren't all aholes and they could contribute big time to a guild through professions, farming, running 5 mans and gearing up offtanks and dps. They could also pvp with you, world pvp, have consumables that gave them an edge etc. Modern WoW literally separates you from people you grew up playing this game with and rewards you for abandoning them with progression. Vanilla never did that.

People claim vanilla was not casual friendly. That's complete BS. It had the most to do for casual players of any expansion. Everything took time, but you always had something to do.

TLDR. TBC introduced too many catch up systems, flying killed world pvp, arena killed classes being unique and broke all other forums of pvp except 3 v 3, segregation of pve content got out of control eventually and further led to class homogenization, it was the first implemenation of a group finder (no one used it), dailies replaced organic pvp and farming content, old world is now useless.

Idk what you are talking about by destroying world pvp... World pvp hadnt ever been as exciting in BC than it was in vanilla. Anyone could get the jump on you. Anyone. Not just some classes. You actually had a chance to escape bad situations if you played well or were fast enough. You could avoid pvp by just flying up, but if you were doing dailies... that simply wasnt an option, especially in the areas with flying mobs. Getting dismounted + enemy players nearby = 100% death.

[Zarator8]

TBC will 100% be failure like it is on private servers.

By that logic, PvE servers would have all failed too, while PvP servers should have thrived just fine. Remind me, the servers which died out so far in Classic were PvE or PvP, again?^^

It's almost as if the interest was never there to make a solid one...

Or maybe, just maybe, the scripting in TBC is convoluted and buggy as hell compared to Vanilla and WotLK and is thus hard to provide for a skeleton crew even if there's a public for it, as anyone who worked on TBC pservers would confirm you - but hey, I guess doing research is asking too much in this board

[Whoopax]

It's almost as if the interest was never there to make a solid one...

Could not have said it better, biggest Warmane tbc project started with 12k pop and after 1 and half month server was dead, and now it barely has 500 people online at any given time, while wotlk and vanilla servers were always populated because they are good games

[Malacrass]

The long-term appeal of classic WoW *anything* is PVP and only PVP. Most people understood this when classic Vanilla launched, the vast majority of the playerbase decided to avoid PVE realms for that reason.

And with that said, the question is if TBC-PVP is appealing enough to keep people invested, and I honestly think it doesn't due to the Arena dominating everything. It will be fun to play through the PVE content again for sure, but the TBC realms have no perspective (and the private server community confirms it)

[Queen of Hamsters]

When I was new in WOTLK, and got to Nagrand, there were constant battles for Halaa. On a PVE server.

So I call bs on there being no wpvp in TBC.

And go figure. The muhnilla crowd cant handle what will likely be a far more successful legacy concept long term.

[lollerlaban]

It's almost as if the interest was never there to make a solid one...

No? It's because you didn't have mangos contributing to it as much as they did on Vanilla.

[Malacrass]

When I was new in WOTLK, and got to Nagrand, there were constant battles for Halaa. On a PVE server.

So I call bs on there being no wpvp in TBC.

There is a difference between some world pvp and pvp carrying the game once the PVE content is largely consumed. And based on experience there is simply no demand for this - even when it's provided for free on private realms.

Like, I have zero doubts that the current Classic Realms (PVP) will survive several years post Naxx, at least a good amount of them. Because even with all the flaws people are crying about, the PVP experience is largely intact. But TBC realms will die once Sunwell is consumed, 100% sure of it.

[shoegazing]

TBC is a VERY good PVE game and sucks at everything else. If raiding was the primary thing you did in WoW you usually loved it. Everything I say past here doesn't matter to you, because TBC might be the best raid/pve game ever made for a "raiding is all that matters" player. If PVE wasn't your primary focus, you can easily view it as highly overrated and point out that it started many of the systems and things that would eventually destroy WoW as we knew it.

Flying destroyed world pvp. Instantly. Nothing more to say about that.

Arena gear/arena led to the changes that destroyed Alterac Valley. ALL players gravitated towards the honor per minute idea to get the resilience gear they needed to start arena, instead of just having fun. Take the mentally ill repeat rank 14 grinders and give that mindset to ALL the players and that is what BG's became. Keep in mind that AV was cleverly designed to get pve players into pvp and that is ceased to exist as intended in TBC and the playerbase became very split with pvp and pve players. This got worse every expansion and now players who used to all be one big, awesome community are split into little groups.

Professions mean very little in pvp because world pvp is dead. Why bother. Rocketboots could be used if I remember right in arena, but could backfire. Hand enchants I think could be used to, but it really didn't matter. I hated arena and tried to block out every time I would get myself or someone else the 1850 weapon. The rest was a waste of time. I also usually played double dps because running around a pole for a long time was awful.

Arena becomes the barometer for everything, due to a dumb rating that autistic kids and streamers who helped ruin WoW, can brag about as they run around a pole with a healer in most comps (other than spriest, rogue, mage). Very few comps are viable and the pvp is awful and the makers of the original WoW said arena was a mistake.
engadget.com/2009/11/13/blizzard-arenas-were-a-mistake/[/url]

The better arena got, the more classes all became the same, which breaks and ruins larger forms of pvp and the "fun factor" and uniqueness of classes. The original designers knew this would happen. Fast forward and we now have unkillable healers when crosshealing happens in a BG or a 1 v 1 happens due to every class having to all have the same CC and chains. PvP outside of 3 v 3 is now GARBAGE. Healers HAVE to be OP in all other scenarios, just so a failed esport can continue.

Segregation of the playerbase happens for the first time with Arena and Heroics. This was not that big a problem in TBC because you only had heroic dungeons and one difficulty of raids. Now we have LFR, normal, heroic, mythic, mythic plus. It's just stupid.

Dailies start as a big thing in TBC. This is what happens when you break world pvp and segregate the playerbase to cater to the "eltiist jerks" (who now run WoW btw). You need dumbed down repeatable, zombie like content for the "casuals" or really nice people who weren't that great mechanically, who actually have very little to do in modern WoW. They eventually get bored/quit and all you are left with in the modern game is LFR/daily zombies who listen to streamers they are so bored and the 1 percent that no one could stand to be around in vanilla.

In vanilla these mechanically deficient players could be "carried" but no one said carried because people weren't all aholes and they could contribute big time to a guild through professions, farming, running 5 mans and gearing up offtanks and dps. They could also pvp with you, world pvp, have consumables that gave them an edge etc. Modern WoW literally separates you from people you grew up playing this game with and rewards you for abandoning them with progression. Vanilla never did that.

People claim vanilla was not casual friendly. That's complete BS. It had the most to do for casual players of any expansion. Everything took time, but you always had something to do.

TLDR. TBC introduced too many catch up systems, flying killed world pvp, arena killed classes being unique and broke all other forums of pvp except 3 v 3, segregation of pve content got out of control eventually and further led to class homogenization, it was the first implemenation of a group finder (no one used it), dailies replaced organic pvp and farming content, old world is now useless.

Sounds like you are bad at playing your class in PvP (the #1 thing that makes you successful in arena) so you love AV (large zergs where individual skill matters little)

TBC is not for you then

I will be having a great time playing my class skillfully in arena while you tell yourself lies about "scale and immersion" making PvP exciting to cover up for the fact that you need 39 other players on a team to average out how limited your skills are

Feel free not to play TBC. You can continue playing classic vanilla or retail, while there is a large audience that loves TBC (not just for PvE, but PvPers like me) and will love playing it


ALSO, TBC had some of the very best WPvP ever at Elemental Plateau, Halaa, and most of all Isle of Quel'Danas

[J012D4N]

Strongly disagree about the world PvP. It was nothing at all.
The only place that had a pinch of PvP was Isle. Only because you couldn't fly.

Honestly, just sounds like your server sucked man, or was very unbalanced?
You're right on one thing, Isle definitely 'escalated' world pvp at that stage in the expansion. That said though, I still recall a lot of PVP elsewhere.

Cho'gall was lit with world PVP in outlands.

- At launch, Kara was a SHIIIIIIT show. SSC, same deal.
Remember that keystones had become active & we'd fight heavily in front of Kara to control it.
- Decent, not great, PVP at some of the ZONE nodes. So like Zangar/HFP. Halaa was by far the best (farm for that Black War Talbulk)
- Primal Farming in Elemental Plateau or SMV was always heated.
So much fighting at Elemental, which always escalated quickly due to proximity to Shatt.
- Basically any kind of farm would carry some kind of pvp, like the Clefthoof circuit near Garadar for example.
I ran that & always had to fight off other LWs.
- PVP constantly in/around Area-52

If anything got 'worse' in TBC, it was the ganking of lowbies.
Literally became impossible to get away from a 70 with their 280 flying. Nowhere to hide