What if there was a way...

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Strange comment coming from a FFXIV apologist.

You should see the FF14 subforum. They call me a hater.

I was thinking more along the lines of GW2 where new expansions don't raise the level cap or introduce new tiers of gear. It's just more content to do for the sake of it.

[Neuroticaine]

I've got news for you. Anything but the base edition of an expansion has an end-game character boost included with it.

Yes, I can imagine it but I wouldn't do it more than a couple of times. It's a $20 choice ($49.99 vs. $69.99).

Blizzard does not include "end game" character boosts. They include level-cap character boosts, which is pretty far from end-game power levels, giving players absolutely terrible gear. Please read the rest of my comment. We already have a massive power gap between a fresh level cap character and a truly end-game geared character.

What the person I originally quoted is asking for is for all end-game content from all expansions to remain relevant. And thus, 20 years of grinding tier to tier to get to a respectably recent power level.

Leveling a character to cap does not mean you've reached the end-game.

ALSO, those boosts START at the previous expansions level cap which is FAR from end game, and do not even get you level capped until we're well into a current expansion.

[MoanaLisa]

Blizzard does not include "end game" character boosts. They include level-cap character boosts, which is pretty far from end-game power levels, giving players absolutely terrible gear. Please read the rest of my comment. We already have a massive power gap between a fresh level cap character and a truly end-game geared character.

Semantics but I'll concede the point since you are correct that once you do a character boost there are still levels to go. Fine and good although the idea of releasing expansions that don't require leveling is precisely to make that irrelevant. GW2 has been mentioned and I like how expansions work there but that's just my opinion.

My real point is that with the character boost no one needs to go through 20 years of content.

[Utrrabbit]

It already failed catastrophically in Classic and I doubt it'd fare any better with retail.

Failed?

Classic is so full righy now with 8hr queue times that they are rolling out more servers.

Yes failed.

[Relapses]

Failed?

Classic is so full righy now with 8hr queue times that they are rolling out more servers.

Yes failed.

I was referring to the Classic Era realms, m9.

[Myradin]

Failed?

Classic is so full righy now with 8hr queue times that they are rolling out more servers.

Yes failed.

Because those are the classic realms that progressed.

Go see the static classic realms or even season of mastery.

[Jastall]

People play this game to progress. See the crashing and burning of static Classic realms and Season of Mastery as evidence. The gear and progression threadmill is the life and blood of this game. Remove it and you remove most incentive to play.

[Linkedblade]

...to continue playing past expansions as current content?

I am thinking mostly of alts here. Most people want their mains and maybe even their favorite alts in current content for raiding, M+, etc. But if you're like me and have several alts, it's kind of fun to go back and play other xpacs. Except - even if you've never played your alt past Legion, for example - their Legion toys (legendaries, artifact) no longer work. I would enjoy leaving a handful of my alts in the expansions that best suited them (my DH in Legion, for example) and still able to play with that xpac's toys, even if all I could do with them was end-zone dailies. It wouldn't be my main thing, just something to play with occasionally and remember those days.

Blizz already has lots of innovations with Chromie Time and Classic. I don't really expect anything like this to happen anytime soon. But I would enjoy it.

For some time there were guilds dedicated to staying at 60 even though the level cap had gone up to 120. I remember seeing a few that did this for level 70 as well.

Problem is you have to have others to do that content with you. You could disable experience at that expansions level cap, and have raids be at their most difficult.

On the game dev side you would have to have a literal dozen different versions of the same content, if not more, that abide by each expansions systems. It's just impractical.

[Ashana Darkmoon]

There are games like ESO and GW2 for people who don't want gear progression. WoW is never going to be that game!*

*(and thank the Light for that)

[Linkedblade]

You should see the FF14 subforum. They call me a hater.

I was thinking more along the lines of GW2 where new expansions don't raise the level cap or introduce new tiers of gear. It's just more content to do for the sake of it.

EQ did this plenty, new expansion meant new gear. But the power creep was much much less.

[Felfaadaern Darkterror]

I'm just sayin'... Going back to play Legion doesn't feel the same without my artifact weapons. I think allowing those items to still work - within the content for which they were designed - would be a great solution.

- - - Updated - - -

There are games like ESO and GW2 for people who don't want gear progression. WoW is never going to be that game!*

*(and thank the Light for that)

OP was not suggesting we don't have gear progression (maybe someone else was, I lost track).
OP was just saying it would be nice to play with old toys when mucking about in old content.
I would be willing to level-cap an alt just to keep them in old content for an occasional change of pace, but I'd want to still play with all the stuff we had back then.

[Relapses]

I'm just sayin'... Going back to play Legion doesn't feel the same without my artifact weapons. I think allowing those items to still work - within the content for which they were designed - would be a great solution.

The reason they get disabled is because Blizzard has to do level squishes and they don't like having to retune outdated content that barely anybody engages with.

[SinR]

They offered a way for Classic players to stay on Classic realms while the rest of the realms continued into TBC.

These servers were immediately dead and barely a single soul played on them. They recently had to be shut down completely because there was no interest in it.

And this is the reason why Blizzard never offered the same thing from TBC:C to WOTLK:C. The interest in staying on Vanilla Classic realms just wasn't there. Classic Era servers were pretty DOA. Blizzard saw this and decided not to put the effort and resources into TBC Era servers. And I'm sure that if Blizzard moves ahead to Cataclysm Classic they'll shluff everyone off to those servers instead of even offering WOTLK Era Servers, because Classic Era bombed.