This makes absolutely no sense. For some reason you think that if there were classic servers available that somehow that information would be used to make a new expansion? Do you not understand that those servers already existed, that information was already used to make the current game? Blizzard did exactly what you suggested.
How do you know that they took this into account? I already said this amount of feedback can prove invaluable to future wow expansion quality. You can't really say that it is worth it or it is not. The feedback is a potential and you cannot put a price on a potential because no one knows exactly what it will do.
Even the small percentage of the community interested in old rules servers would only play them for a limited amount of time. Very niche activity.
Look at how many people level-lock toons to do old raids now. Very few. And that requires a lot less commitment than true old content servers.
I bet if people woke up one day and found that they were playing 1.12 instead of 5.3 they would all flip a shit and immediately unsub / uninstall.
Not to mention how rediculously easy old school raids would be with the current skillcap, Heroic leishen makes naxx 40 look like a joke, Top 10 US guilds like my own would faceroll in a week. Edit: they would have to completely revamp old raids to make them relevant / challenging.
You are making an assumption about the feedback. Blizzard knows how much something like this would cost. I can just as easily say that the feedback would be near worthless although it might get people to shut up on the forums (which to be honest might be worth a lot in Blizzard's eyes)
If anything people will admit that Blizzard was right about the nostalgia and go right back to either playing the game or using their sub to complain. I highly doubt any possible feedback they might get will be enough to get back the money they'd need to build such a thing.
OP, let me know if this is your train of thought here:
1. Blizzard opens classic realms.
2. Millions of players flock to them to play (2-3 million perhaps?).
3. Those millions give feedback on how awesome the game was back then.
4. Blizzard takes this feedback to make changes to the current game, thus making the current game more Vanilla-BC-like?
Because this sounds like where you're going with this.
I think that's a good point.
I would totally play on those servers too. Even if it cost me another 5$ a month.
I think you have been blind sided by the idea of feedback.
not all feedback is worth while, or relevant.
lets look at hunter point of view.
feedback, having to buy ammo all the time is annoying, well that's not in current content that's not an issue.
having one less bag slot dude to quiver is annoying, ok taken care of already so not relevant.
feeding pet non stop, when you dismiss a pet its happiness drops, and if you do not fix that eventually it will run away. yep that sounds really awesome, and NONE OF IT RELEVANT to current content.
lets look at abilities. so any didn't exist back then, or aimed shot costs too much mana, well that aint relevant anymore because hunters do not use mana.
hunter min distance, also irrelevant to comment to blizz about.
war;locks spending hours farming up a buttload of shards for every single raid. that is no longer an issue, hence feedback no needed. the entire world of azeroth was updated in cata, classes that would not exist. ally only have pallys, horde shammies leading to bosses that one side has a way easier time with than the other.
you spout feedback but is that feedback really any good to blizzard.
sure when vanilla was current yes that feedback is great. but now in MOP, you really think any feedback from 7 years ago is truly useful?
I'm not hostile to the idea, if I had the time I'd probably roll a character on such a server myself. Just saying it's only going to appeal to a small group of people which is why Blizzard probably won't expend the resources on it.
Heheh, true. I doubt world first players would be the ones playing on these servers though.
Would be nice to finally hammer some nails into the coffin of "raids are so easy now compared to TBC ZOMG!!!" though.
No, we pull all positives and all negatives from every expansion all at the same time and weave them all into future expansions. In my view all expansions have goods and bads, but designing a game only from expansion to expansion only pulls form positives and negatives of the previous expansion. If you multiply this by time original ideas slowly distort. Designing a game expansion to expansion is completely different from designing a game pulling from feedback of all expansions live at the same time.
Eh...Vanilla and BC realms...so awesome to be only a support class and going back to the retlol or have to be a warrior if you wanted to tank a boss....
Or having to lvl only shooting with a wand....
Such awesome times.
/sarcasm
We'll yeah this guy has found the fault in my idea. Increased feedback would also mean increased bad feedback which would be a bigger drain on blizzard. Every positive comes with a negative I guess. So honestly the increased feedback would be a lot more work for blizzard, but it also has a much greater reward. Besides large rewards always come with a large amount of hard work right behind them.
There have been many threads about this. In fact, I remember one where there was a poll and overwhelmingly, everyone said NO and were fine with just moving on with the current product of the game. If people want to go back to those times in the game currently and relive the nostalgia, go for it, that's awesome, but the reality is that a very small amount of people want throw back servers. Most people have seen all the older content a million times over and are bored of it. And even if they were released, they would be fun for about a week and then get even more boring.
If people really want that, just stop at 70 and raid with others that level if you want to relive the nostalgia.
I also forgot to mention that Blizzard keeps track of everything, so they don't need to release old servers to get the info. They're well aware of everything already. As proof of Mists of Pandaria. We've seen a fair amount of throw backs from BC and even vanilla.