How long will the Classic servers actually last?

[Deleted]

The servers will be 2-3 years away, i have no doubt in my mind about that one. They would be foolish to release it in "competition" with another 'vanilla' themed expansion. so lets say its released april 2020. There is roughly 3 years of 'progression' for the realm as a whole. yes, some will clear faster than that, but overall, it should have a similar lifespan to original. thats april 2023. sure, you could counter argue and condense that down to maybe 2021, but thats still a bloody long time away.

My point is, lets not worry about the year 2023. I realize some people think the release of wow:classic is only months away, maybe a year at the most, but i just really dont see anything of the sort happening, not even close. my HONEST opinion is that IF they release it at all, assuming its not just another dance studio, it will be released with 9.0 patch.

yes, NINE POINT ZERO. not 8.0. NINE. the end of the next expansion. There could be an argument that they want to release it early, around 8.1 or something, to try and cross pollinate players between the expac and classic, and boost their overall numbers, but i just really only see that hurting their main cash cow in the wow game, and thats the core, current expansion.

I reckon they will try to get everyone to buy one their new expansions by releasing it near the same time. I don't think it will take so long as 2-3 years, as far as i'm aware, their biggest issue is getting back the hardware, (which blizzard somehow managed to get the game off of it at some point.)

[Nitros14]

So nuts, that these same mechanics were taken as some of the easiest raiding ever done 2 expansions later.

It was gear. It was the size of the raid. It was materials.

Four Horsemen is a completely different fight at 60.

Gothik would be a completely different fight if your tanks had no AoE threat and the mobs had 300% more HP and damage.

Shrug.

Here's a helpful thread http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...-80-difficulty

The Four Horsemen:
- All four Horsemen were tankable and mobile, Sir Zeliek and Lady Blaumeux melee'd their tank. This meant in practice that six tanks were needed to defeat the encounter. If all six had four piece tier 3 and Nat Pagle's spell hit trinket it was feasible with six. Otherwise most guilds took eight tanks to guard against taunt resists.
- Marks last 75 seconds, up from 25 seconds. Damage was 0-500-1000-2000-3000-4000-5000-6000-7000 etc.
- Highlord Mograine <The Ashbringer> was there instead of Baron Rivendare. Identical abilities except Mograine did Fire damage instead of Shadow.
- Each Horseman cast Shield Wall at 75% and 25% health, reducing damage taken by 75% for 20 seconds. This made focusing down a single Horseman quickly impossible.

At 80 you didn't even do the mechanic, you just zerged a Horseman down because there were no shield walls. And even if you did the mechanic 25 seconds is a million times less punishing than 75. And even if it were that punishing the abilities hit for the same at 60 and 80. Void Zone is 4,000 per sec at 60 4,000 per sec at 80.

[Morbownz]

People should really stop comparing anything on pirate servers to vanilla or classic.

Tuning is so far off on those servers, that the experience in Naxx is much closer to WotLK version.

I don't know how accurate this is. But I do remember the top guild on my server spending days clearing Naxx just to get attempts on KT. I watched the stream of a guild clearing Naxx on a private realm and they nearly cleared the place in one night. That's definitely way off. I know people say "yea but we are better players now", classes were not really dynamic, so it's not possible to do significantly more damage in 2017 than back in 2006.
I got to see 3 Bosses in Naxx, didn't kill the 3rd (20% wipe), the trash alone was fucking ridiculous, going from Anub -> Grand Widow Faerlina.

[Nitros14]

I don't know how accurate this is. But I do remember the top guild on my server spending days clearing Naxx just to get attempts on KT. I watched the stream of a guild clearing Naxx on a private realm and they nearly cleared the place in one night. That's definitely way off. I know people say "yea but we are better players now", classes were not really dynamic, so it's not possible to do significantly more damage in 2017 than back in 2006.
I got to see 3 Bosses in Naxx, didn't kill the 3rd (20% wipe), the trash alone was fucking ridiculous, going from Anub -> Grand Widow Faerlina.

To be fair, a lot of the people on private realms have cleared the content 1000 times, at 60, then at 80, then on private servers. As people farm things it speeds up.

[swisscheese]

You are saying by the time you where in naxx40 you didnt have everyone in aq40+ gear? More so with the t2.5 tokens dropping like candy?
You are saying you killed twin emps with GM ilvl 71 gear?
Right, we are the clueless ones who didn't do things

Keep believing your own lies man, keep believing.

Also 16 C'thun kills? Even nihilum only killed him 6 times before Naxx40 came out, you are digging your hole deeper...

By the time we started Naxx, we definitely didn't have everyone in aq40 gear...hell....I remember DEing a metric crap ton of the gear that dropped in there. It takes a long time to gear up 40+ people if only 1 piece of usable loot dropped per boss. We also did raid with 2 r14's, a pally (although I'm not sure how much of the gear he used as he healed), and a shadow priest.

Side note, I remember the bosses dropping a pitiful amount of gold as well. Not even enough to pay for general wear and tear repair bills

[WhiteEagle888]

I give it one year. 2 tops.

[Aggrophobic]

A month? Bosses don’t drop enough loot for you to gear up that fast. Also tier 3 loot was gated behind rep. There are also a few gear check bosses on the way. Im pretty sure Patchwerk is impossible unless you have a stacked group with AQ gear.

The only real insight into the time and effort it takes these days is from the servers we can't talk about.
It really doesn't take that long if you know what you're going for.

[Daffan]

Vanilla was out for 2 years and 2 months.

Quality shit post though!

Yeah that guy used his brain reel gud

And less than 1% saw Naxxramas.

It must be hard to be so salty though

Yeah the 'difficulty' made it so hard that only 1% of players could get to Naxx! Not the fact that the average player couldn't even start raiding because <insert> dead server, no guilds, bad timezone, required 40 people, required hours for starting the raid (Get on 30 minutes before raid for invites!) and heaps of other logistic stuff that wasn't really part of the game. If Flex alone existed back then, the participation rates would have skyrocketed.

Because TBC is the most popular expansion among the veterans (and WotLK among the newcomers).
The problem with TBC is that it started with one philosophy and ended with another, so deciding which version to use is much more problematic than Vanilla, which was more consistent about its design philosophy. Also, TBC had serious troubles with making content obsolete due to catch-up (badge system) or unintended consequences (typically, PvP weapons being ultra-easy to get and nearly on-par with PvE weapons), which was more of a WotLK design and clash with the Vanilla one.

Basically, TBC is half a better version of Vanilla (much better gameplay, much more interesting bosses, much more balanced classes, while still keeping them truly different) but half the start of the casual rot that ruined Vanilla (with said catch-up mechanism bypassing content). So it's quite harder to decide how a TBC server would be (I would like to have a 2.4 talents tree with 2.1 content, no badge gear above the initial ilvl 105 one and PvP gear only usable in arena, but that's screaming "my controversial opinion", good luck to have everyone agreeing on a common version).

TBC didn't start going out of control until Heroic MGT imo. The PVP weapons were a joke yes but the early badges weren't that bad. H MGT was a whole different ball game.

[arkanon]

I reckon they will try to get everyone to buy one their new expansions by releasing it near the same time. I don't think it will take so long as 2-3 years, as far as i'm aware, their biggest issue is getting back the hardware, (which blizzard somehow managed to get the game off of it at some point.)

We agree, and you just dont realise it. They WILL try to use it to boost interest in their new expansion, but there is NO WAY it will be BfA, it will be the next expansion after that. 2-3 years is extremely likely.

Im actually really not sure what "hardware" you think they are getting back?

[Akka]

To be fair, a lot of the people on private realms have cleared the content 1000 times, at 60, then at 80, then on private servers. As people farm things it speeds up.

Yeah but it's also known that private servers are a "best as we can" emulation of Vanilla, and many critical data is missing and approximated.
I remember of a TBC server where hunters could do something like 2,5k DPS in blue. It's roughly twice and half as much as they could in retail at the same gear. And that's a very "in your face" bug which is easily checkable. There is countless other things that could be off, especially on bosses with lots of mechanisms which could be either bugged or simply not identical to Vanilla.

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TBC didn't start going out of control until Heroic MGT imo. The PVP weapons were a joke yes but the early badges weren't that bad. H MGT was a whole different ball game.

Well, 2.4 was the nails in the coffin, but even before it was pretty ridiculous. T5 gear was barely better than S2 gear for many DPS classes (yes better, but not THAT better), while one required to kill some pretty challenging to downright hard bosses (okay, except Void Reaver which was the loot pinata), while the other only required to lose ten matches a week for a few weeks. And farming dungeons could get you ilvl 128 gear through badges (the same level as the second raid). It was rather depressing to get motivated to clear raids when you realized you wouldn't get an actual better gear than what you could gain by farming lower content.

In fact, it was these complains which pushed Blizzard to start with tiered badges in WotLK, before they just said "fuck it, let's bury the last piece of the old design" and reverted to this in 3.2.

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We agree, and you just dont realise it. They WILL try to use it to boost interest in their new expansion, but there is NO WAY it will be BfA, it will be the next expansion after that. 2-3 years is extremely likely.

It would be surprising. Once again, they don't have to do 90 % of the work, which is already done. They have to adapt the game and insert it in their architecture, and it's not the same work as creating a whole expansion. It should take them between 6 monthes and 1 year, anything more is just them dragging their feet.

[arkanon]

Yeah but it's also known that private servers are a "best as we can" emulation of Vanilla, and many critical data is missing and approximated.
I remember of a TBC server where hunters could do something like 2,5k DPS in blue. It's roughly twice and half as much as they could in retail at the same gear. And that's a very "in your face" bug which is easily checkable. There is countless other things that could be off, especially on bosses with lots of mechanisms which could be either bugged or simply not identical to Vanilla.

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Well, 2.4 was the nails in the coffin, but even before it was pretty ridiculous. T5 gear was barely better than S2 gear for many DPS classes (yes better, but not THAT better), while one required to kill some pretty challenging to downright hard bosses (okay, except Void Reaver which was the loot pinata), while the other only required to lose ten matches a week for a few weeks. And farming dungeons could get you ilvl 128 gear through badges (the same level as the second raid). It was rather depressing to get motivated to clear raids when you realized you wouldn't get an actual better gear than what you could gain by farming lower content.

In fact, it was these complains which pushed Blizzard to start with tiered badges in WotLK, before they just said "fuck it, let's bury the last piece of the old design" and reverted to this in 3.2.

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It would be surprising. Once again, they don't have to do 90 % of the work, which is already done. They have to adapt the game and insert it in their architecture, and it's not the same work as creating a whole expansion. It should take them between 6 monthes and 1 year, anything more is just them dragging their feet.

Right so we do have a misunderstanding here. I am not saying it will take them 2-3 years to prepare classic for launch, im saying they will not release it, by choice, until the time is right. And i do not believe that time will be during the lifespan of the core progression of BfA. Instead, i would think the 'best' time to release it would be during the latter part of the last raid tier of BfA, or, imo much more likely, with patch 9.0.

Anyone who honestly thinks classic will be released in months rather than years is living in a dream world.

[ComputerNerd]

The "content" being cleared in the current game by some players does not stop others from progressing towards it.
Why would it for that.

As long as it doesn't get cleared by the entirety or near enough then there will always be those available who have not.

[Popthehood]

Id say each server will keep their peak for roughly 2-3 years. The more competitive the server is the quicker it dies. If Naxx is cleared by multiple guilds in a matter of a couple days upon release, chances are some or many of them will be gone in the next few months. The golden age for a vanilla server imo is from the time it first opens to the opening of AQ. I have never seen a server keep it's average population for long after AQ being put on farm. Play in the moment though, if you're on a server where guilds are fighting over control of world bosses then pull up your socks cause that's the server to be on.

[Pandragon]

It's gonna last a long time. It's just not gonna be as populated as they think

[gkai]

It's gonna last a long time. It's just not gonna be as populated as they think

as who thinks? blizzard? I don't think I've ever heard them stating that it was going to be popular or not.

[Pandragon]

as who thinks? blizzard? I don't think I've ever heard them stating that it was going to be popular or not.

Not Blizzard.

[Shadowater]

It was mostly leveling back then. If you manage to get your main to lvl 60 and clear every raid you could just level a new on and do it all again on a different class.
Or you just go into bgs and one shot everyone on your overgeared superman character.

[ReVnX]

Yeah the 'difficulty' made it so hard that only 1% of players could get to Naxx! Not the fact that the average player couldn't even start raiding because <insert> dead server, no guilds, bad timezone, required 40 people, required hours for starting the raid (Get on 30 minutes before raid for invites!) and heaps of other logistic stuff that wasn't really part of the game. If Flex alone existed back then, the participation rates would have skyrocketed.

I was not talking about difficulty, I was talking about longevity

[Akka]

Right so we do have a misunderstanding here. I am not saying it will take them 2-3 years to prepare classic for launch, im saying they will not release it, by choice, until the time is right. And i do not believe that time will be during the lifespan of the core progression of BfA. Instead, i would think the 'best' time to release it would be during the latter part of the last raid tier of BfA, or, imo much more likely, with patch 9.0.

Anyone who honestly thinks classic will be released in months rather than years is living in a dream world.

Well, that was what I was meaning when I said "dragging their feet".
But I really don't think they will wait until after BfA. That would completely exhaust the hype for Classic servers. Remember that they DO have competition on this front, and it comes from a free alternative.

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It's gonna last a long time. It's just not gonna be as populated as they think

But on the other hand, it won't be as empty as they think, so it kind of cancels out.

[Mister K]

months to gear up? it will take months to just get to 60.

Getting to 60 will take approx 6-12 days.