Classic servers are the END of wow

[Hottage]

World of Warcraft is finally the World of Warcraft killer than nay-sayers have been harping on about for the last 12 years.

[JohnnyMccrum]

Having a different opinion doesn't make someone wrong. The OSRS community is one of the most toxic shithead filled communities in gaming I've ever experienced. Besides that, I tried OSRS myself and thought it was absolute total dogshit garbage. That's coming from someone that had played RuneScape from 2002 or so and occasionally play RS3 still. RS3 is immeasurably better than OSRS but that's just my opinion.

WoW will be going strong for years to come, whether people want to believe it or not.

Nice opinion, shame the runescape community blatantly doesn't share it, your opinion is absolutely meaningless xD

[Projectmars]

TBH: I did always think Blizzard was silly for outright saying "No Classic" for years when it would be perfect to introduce at the end of WoW's life cycle after the game basically worked itself to a narrative end. Of course, I also expected said narrative end to involve an entire expansion around liberating Argus from the Legion, with both factions mostly united on The Exodar, as it travelled there with a host of familiar faces from WoW's history. (i.e. Fiona and the Paladin Pals, Taran Zhu, Brann, and ETC (who is there to both provide entertainment AND challenge Sargeras to a rock-off) to name a few)

But it doesn't quite seem like this is the case. I wouldn't be surprised if they still have a few more expansions planned out past the launch of BfA and Classic, with Classic providing a shot in the arm to help keep it rolling.

[He-man]

TBH: I did always think Blizzard was silly for outright saying "No Classic" for years when it would be perfect to introduce at the end of WoW's life cycle after the game basically worked itself to a narrative end. Of course, I also expected said narrative end to involve an entire expansion around liberating Argus from the Legion, with both factions mostly united on The Exodar, as it travelled there with a host of familiar faces from WoW's history. (i.e. Fiona and the Paladin Pals, Taran Zhu, Brann, and ETC (who is there to both provide entertainment AND challenge Sargeras to a rock-off) to name a few)

But it doesn't quite seem like this is the case. I wouldn't be surprised if they still have a few more expansions planned out past the launch of BfA and Classic, with Classic providing a shot in the arm to help keep it rolling.

what would the expansions after BFA cover.? you realise there is literally no zone or area mentioned in the lore that hasn't been built or explored in some way after BFA ... BFA literally fills in the last gaps in the map.

I doubt they will just make up new lore I think they will leave it and call it a day. also I doubt we will ever get WoW2

[Ifeanychukwu]

Nice opinion, shame the runescape community blatantly doesn't share it, your opinion is absolutely meaningless xD

You know a huge portion of the active players in OSRS are bots right? They're much more rampant in OSRS than RS3 and the GMs don't manage the problem as much as they do in RS3. Doesn't make my opinion any less valid or yours any less invalid to me.

[JohnnyMccrum]

You know a huge portion of the active players in OSRS are bots right? They're much more rampant in OSRS than RS3 and the GMs don't manage the problem as much as they do in RS3. Doesn't make my opinion any less valid or yours any less invalid to me.

yeah you're right, your opinion remains as invalid as it always was.

bots are a problem in every game, ironically, botting is mostly an issue for good games, a vibrant economy attracts corruption to exploit the economy and sell gold.

bots are a serious issue; but trying to say that OSRS is a bad game because of bots is dimwitted, and trying to suggest that JaGeX is doing nothing is dimwitted, and trying to say that this makes other games better or worse by comparison is dimwitted.

The WoW economy is in ruins, bots always recovered and found new ways to exploit and destroy the economy after a DECADE OF PREVENTION, and to prevent it, Blizzard pretty much made the game into farmville, where massive amounts of gold are available for everyone, on a daily timer. It got to the point where Blizzard actually, very literally sold gold and leveling at unmatchable rates, introducing things like pets, which could literally be sold for gold.

RS3 was infamous for destroying the game in order to prevent botting; so of course, choosing NOT to destroy the current economy by introducing a sweeping, generalized, game-destroying patch is going to have setbacks, after all, it's the harder less-lazy option. prevention became more proactive and retroactive, rather than just blanket-prevention.

This is common sense to most people.

[He-man]

Go talk to the guys that have the sig where BfA will have zero subs and Classic WoW has..like all of the subs...and have fun

You real have two things in common...no facts, just guessing and wishful thinking.

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Now I am interested. What was the game philosophy that changed forever in WotLK.....? Less grindy? Can't be casualization, because...compared to other MMORPGs, that was how Classic was conceived..and boy...was it a hit.

lol your seriously saying that things in WOTLK and after are just as casual and less grindy as classic. you clearly never played classic. things actually took time in classic if you where raiding at a good level you where basically playing for at least 8 hours a day or more.

[Alydael]

OK so I would say the general consensus is that blizzard caved to the demands and announced classic for popular approval because so many people where talking about them for about a year prior to the announcement.

However!

I think this just isn't the case. They have released re-mastered or updated patches for all their old games to make them work on current systems and I really do think classic was announced to mark a end of wow development.

sure legion seems to be popular people like it its twitch streamed a fair amount however I do think the stopping of growth at the start of WOTLK to the start of the decline at the start of CATA has continued. the trend of where the current subs would be would be very very low and very possibly lower than the private servers combined total which is around 1.2mil last I checked.

sure you can argue why stop now that expansions make money and sell even if subs drop drastically after and that's true but at some point blizzard will stop releasing expansions for the very rule that they cancel more games than they release and only want to release the best quality content and at some point the fact players are not staying around would imply that content is bad even if its not and blizzard puts huge effort into it.

I think for the face of the company and to not let it die out slowly wow will eventually stop getting expansions and I personally think that BFA is very possibly the last major expansion with only patches updates remakes of old dungions/raids possible in the future after woods.

I don't think classic will "kill" wow retail I honestly think it will probably increase the users on retail realms but I just think the decision to add classic servers is so odd and so iconic of a "end of a era" kind of decision that I really can see it being the "last" big wow release.

blizzard has historically released about 1 new game every year since the start of the 90s and with no new announcements of projects currently in the works I really think 2018 will be BFA 2019 will be classic and 2020 will be some new game that very likely could be a new MMO.

I just think its over for wow and blizzard wouldn't release classic if they intended to continue working on retail expansions.

Blizzard will support WoW as long as it makes money.......

The game is making hundreds of millions of dollars a year. They aren't about to turn that kind of money down.

The only way they would end WoW, is if they had WoW 2 ready to roll out. They don't. There is no reason for a WoW 2 unless it is going to be significantly different from WoW to warrant it being it's own entity. We would know if they had been developing that.

They are making WoW Classic because the research said it would be profitable. They are a business (after all) and businesses like to do profitable things (it is really the reason they exist).

I think they are looking at WoW Classic as: a game that will at least be profitable and has an outside chance to really take off (like WoW did) and make tons of money, plus it has the added benefit of being a gift to all those that have been lobbying for it.

- - - Updated - - -

World of Warcraft is finally the World of Warcraft killer than nay-sayers have been harping on about for the last 12 years.

That would be hilarious, I almost hope it happens.

[Ifeanychukwu]

yeah you're right, your opinion remains as invalid as it always was.

bots are a problem in every game, ironically, botting is mostly an issue for good games, a vibrant economy attracts corruption to exploit the economy and sell gold.

bots are a serious issue; but trying to say that OSRS is a bad game because of bots is dimwitted, and trying to suggest that JaGeX is doing nothing is dimwitted, and trying to say that this makes other games better or worse by comparison is dimwitted.

The WoW economy is in ruins, bots always recovered and found new ways to exploit and destroy the economy after a DECADE OF PREVENTION, and to prevent it, Blizzard pretty much made the game into farmville, where massive amounts of gold are available for everyone, on a daily timer. It got to the point where Blizzard actually, very literally sold gold and leveling at unmatchable rates, introducing things like pets, which could literally be sold for gold.

RS3 was infamous for destroying the game in order to prevent botting; so of course, choosing NOT to destroy the current economy by introducing a sweeping, generalized, game-destroying patch is going to have setbacks, such as prevention needing to be more retroactive.

This is common sense to most people.

Are you seriously trying to equate OSRS having lots of bots to meaning that it's better than RS3? I never claimed OSRS was bad anyway, I stated my opinion. You're the one trying to claim that opinions are wrong and trying to defend a toxic community by claiming that the game is better because they have more bots. People can like whatever they want. What's funny is that people like you who by all appearances hate the game but still spend the time in forums dedicated to said game complaining.

You can claim that WoW is dying all you want but if you were actually paying attention you'd know that it's doing better than it has in a long time and has a very promising future ahead of it. Just because you don't like the way the game has changed over the years doesn't mean that the majority feels the same way.

[JohnnyMccrum]

Are you seriously trying to equate OSRS having lots of bots to meaning that it's better than RS3? I never claimed OSRS was bad anyway, I stated my opinion. You're the one trying to claim that opinions are wrong and trying to defend a toxic community by claiming that the game is better because they have more bots. People can like whatever they want. What's funny is that people like you who by all appearances hate the game but still spend the time in forums dedicated to said game complaining.

You can claim that WoW is dying all you want but if you were actually paying attention you'd know that it's doing better than it has in a long time and has a very promising future ahead of it. Just because you don't like the way the game has changed over the years doesn't mean that the majority feels the same way.

Last time I checked Legion was only doing "slightly better" than WoD in an official Blizzard statement, which means it was a disaster when compared to any other expansion.

Last time I checked Blizzard was actively preventing the release of official server figures, which were officially low at the time blizzard stopped producing them, opting instead to conceal them.

Last time I checked, there are literally 10 ex-players for each 1 player playing the game. 100 million accounts have quit WoW over it's lifetime, to suggest these players left because of personal reasons is a lie, because 6 million people didn't suddenly grow a wife and kids when WoD came out, did they?

I never claimed WoW was dying. It's dead.

now stop replying, you're horrifically BORING. typical drone. shoo! back to the hive!

[Deficineiron]

Go talk to the guys that have the sig where BfA will have zero subs and Classic WoW has..like all of the subs...and have fun

You real have two things in common...no facts, just guessing and wishful thinking.

- - - Updated - - -



Now I am interested. What was the game philosophy that changed forever in WotLK.....? Less grindy? Can't be casualization, because...compared to other MMORPGs, that was how Classic was conceived..and boy...was it a hit.

they really took a hard turn on making sure everything was pretty much doable solo or pug in 3.0.2, and it WAS a sharp difference from 2.4.3. This was the first content release post-merger. Also, blue said (in writing) that naxx was not tuned as hard as 'we (blue)' would have liked - if not how blue wanted it tuned, then who??

my theory even at the time was they had simply not increased elite mob damage proportional to the increase in player health pools. later I came to conclude that they had possibly gone in and just done across-the-board cuts to mob damage and maybe raid boss health vs. what they had set it up for. when you look at how the game changed going forward, it isn't hard to see they had decided that most everyone should be able to do almost everything. Some blues even spelled it out in an odd way (chilton I think).

I think it was the merger. Others disagree. No one who was actually there but is no longer employed by blizzard is talking. Activision is the accessible game company. Kotick talked about it every chance he got. In those years forum members were in the 'a/b doesn't have any control over blizzard' cognitive dissonance zone, despite the outrageous implications for a publicly traded company with a rogue division making up almost half its revenue.

This isn't 10-year-later memories, I have probably linked my thread from 3.0.8 on the dungeon difficulty topic to you before.

[He-man]

that's pretty interesting about that change being after the activation merger. its interesting thou that that was the time the population of the game stopped growing and started to decline. you would think if act-bliz was influencing them they would have seen the mistake and fixed it but they haven't really have they... hmmm sure legion is a popular expansion but I think that's because it was the last big expansion chris metzen and some other guy worked on before they quit blizzard (heaps of people quit in 2016) so I think maybe they where like "lets go out with a bang" or some thing like that.

its just odd activision hasn't told blizzard to take the game back to how it was... I guess mythic might have been a attempt at that but I'm not sure its enough... maybe things are changing. but yer... honestly I think the decline of wow might have been for many reasons. even if they had kept the game just as hard as pre 3.0.2 the population might have still declined just as much. I'm pretty sure the main reason the population is dropping is that all the War3 content is dealt with. I think people underestimate how much War3 has a effect on Wow I would wager that War3 might have been pirated 40-50mil times. and I just think all the content after WOTLK hasn't been enough "like war3" ... leagion maybe hit 10mil after launch which would be pretty good and possibly because of war3 but we still don't know if the 10.1mil number for legion was not true or true or not...

wow is in a weird place. even if legion his 10.1mil its numbers right now could be under 5mil or as low as 1-2mil sounds crazy but panda had a small spike after release and wod had a even bigger one so it makes sense for legion to have a even bigger spike. wow is dieing a slow death thou... I really think no matter how good the expansions are things ultimately will get worse and worse.

I still think BFA will be their last. people say they will keep releasing them because selling the expansion plus maybe 2-3months of high subs is enough to justify it but I think people are underestimating the cost of making the expansion and renting the extra server space just for afue months after it comes out. imo they would get way better deals on servers if they kept them as capacitiy for the entire 2-3years between expanions which they cant do.

but yer we just have to wait and see what return blizzard thinks is viable for a expansion. its very possible that even if they are earning 300+mil a year it might not be enough to justify a new expansion after bfa. sure they could just do one "for the fans" but ultimately they have other games they could release and I think its odd that they have nothing announced but if they announce like 1-2 games at E3 or some thing it might become very clear that wow is dead especially if one is a mmo

[epLe]

Blizzard likes earning money.

Classic is just milking that old Vanilla Cow for some more of that.

And it will work, just like all their other paid services $$$.

[He-man]

yer I agree blizzard likes money but they also spend 100s of millions marketing their games. they can probably only afford to market 1 game a year if they have some thing they think can earn them more money than wow they will release that instead of a wow expansion. blizzard wont simply release every thing they have simply because they have it they are famous for canceling games as well.

if blizzard can earn 600mil a year from wow+expansions
but blizzard can earn 800mil a year from new game

they might put that money into the new game and cancel the expansions.

[Deficineiron]

that's pretty interesting about that change being after the activation merger. its interesting thou that that was the time the population of the game stopped growing and started to decline. you would think if act-bliz was influencing them they would have seen the mistake and fixed it but they haven't really have they... hmmm sure legion is a popular expansion but I think that's because it was the last big expansion chris metzen and some other guy worked on before they quit blizzard (heaps of people quit in 2016) so I think maybe they where like "lets go out with a bang" or some thing like that.

most of what follows is speculation. Some is based on interviews with Kotick before, during, and after the merger.

sub growth was itself already slowing last year of bc, regardless of what followed.

Kotick was already very successful at the time of the merger. He had found a huge market for making games far more accessible than they ever had been before - making gaming a mass market business, rather than selling to a sub-class of geeks. Here he gets this offer to acquire blizzard but give up half his company to a mostly silent partner, vivendi. At the time of the merger, wow was almost half of combined a/b revenue, so wow was a very big deal. From vivendi's view, they had suddenly found they owned a golden goose and wanted to get it into a structure that gave them some upside. I am not sure how much choice they had as far as merger partners - EA might be the only other one of stature at that time.

he has stated he really didn't know anything about wow prior to the merger deal. I am not sure he really knew much about mmo's or what the retention hooks were and how they related to unattainable or hard-to-attain goals in an MMO. I do not believe he understood that what he may have seen as barriers to potential customers playing the game were actually important parts of making players set goals beyond the next 20 minutes. I can imagine his team asking blizzard all these questions about why they let customers fail and QUIT and cancel (something pardo had clearly stated they were willing to accept to let their game be the way they felt it should be), as well as exploring the value added revenue angle 'we see you don't allow pve to pvp server xfers. can you explain this?'

What blizzard had developed as integral parts of the basic rules of their mmo (since this was made by mmo players), Kotick's people would have tended to see as intentionally, insanely erecting barriers against a broader customer base.

short version, he knows best thing from his experience is let the players see everything, and says 'everyone should be able to see every part of the game, figure out how to implement it and do it.' The rest is history. if blizz makes a new 'content' for the game, it is measured based on participation and completion metrics - there was a point blues were even POSTING these stats, so clearly they were important to someone. I think this is part of why the latest greatest raid has to immediately become the only relevant raid - they are being scored internally on that. It may well be that LFR was designed to get raid participation stats up - a blue even said at the time that without LFR, they wouldnt be able to do raids (paraphrasing but it was pretty direct).

as far as seeing a mistake - 1) corporate executives tend to keep doing what works and have egos as tall as skyscrapers. 2) we don't actually know churn data for late bc/wotlk. it would tell a lot 3) he may have assumed there would be a customer turnover based on change in game over time, but the turnover was toward the type of customer his company wanted anyway.

worth noting that my general thinking on all the above is why I don't believe classic will be released without some serious dumbing-down and nerfing to broaden appeal. I could certainly be wrong and blizz could certainly try to persuade a/b to let them try it this way, but I have no idea if that is even a possibility on the table and everyone knows more accessibility is better, right?

I have heard blizz has been in a series of faustian bargains trying to slow the page of overt monetization of wow as pressured by a/b. pre-paying expansions is one (paying for their development costs, essentially), and the token has the feel of them trying to find a way to not just openly say yes to printing new gold and selling it to players. Boosts and tokens openly break the Pardo Rule on microtransactions.

[He-man]

wotlk felt like a expansion meant for consoles I wouldn't be surprised if activision had a lot to do with it

-matchmaking
-achievements
-easy difficulty settings
-easier class mechanics

but its possible blizzard came to thous ideas them self... but yer likelihood they where pressured into that is pretty high imo. I doubt blizzard really cared about any of thous points. every thing they cover was already achived in the game via another way I think they where "dressing up" their game for sale to activision.

apart of me doubts activision actually told them what to do and blizzard just changed the game to show it off to activision before the sale to encourage them to say yes.

while the changes to wow might be bad I'm still not sure that's why the games population has dropped I think its probably mainly because after WOTLK people thought "wow was over" because all the War3 content had been already done+ game was old.

I think the whole catering to the casuals thing is just a desperate attempt to stop the numbers dropping and while it might make the game worse I don't think its actually what's making numbers drop.

[Deficineiron]

yer idknow. hmm WOTLK did really feel odd and like it was out of the blue. its very possible some of the decisions made about it where from activision perhaps they told them they needed matchmaking etc etc. easy difficulties etc. perhaps that was part of the deal to increase the value of blizzard.

idknow thou I think even if activision did encourage them to do that I'm surprised they haven't gone back and changed things to be more like classic/tbc since then. perhaps they have but once they caved and made things easier they couldn't remove features to make it harder because of the risk of loosing "light" players.

idknow wow is in a weird place at this point I'm just 99% sure it will die in 2020. apart of me just wants to forget about it already.
I'm looking forward to classic being my last experience of wow but possibly while I play classic I might play some BFA perhaps but I'm really not sure as I'm still not convinced that mythic is actually as hard as people say.

when you have a boss, you do things his way, and this boss' way is accessibility. he makes and manages mass-market games. I suspect the 4.0 heroic (with random matchmaking, mind you - a disaster waiting to happen) effort was the last gasp of anyone willing to buck management, and honestly, if you imagine BC with no attunements to heroics and random grouping, there was just no way the 2 go together.

[Mirishka]

OK so I would say the general consensus is that blizzard caved to the demands and announced classic for popular approval because so many people where talking about them for about a year prior to the announcement.

However!

I think this just isn't the case. They have released re-mastered or updated patches for all their old games to make them work on current systems and I really do think classic was announced to mark a end of wow development.

sure legion seems to be popular people like it its twitch streamed a fair amount however I do think the stopping of growth at the start of WOTLK to the start of the decline at the start of CATA has continued. the trend of where the current subs would be would be very very low and very possibly lower than the private servers combined total which is around 1.2mil last I checked.

sure you can argue why stop now that expansions make money and sell even if subs drop drastically after and that's true but at some point blizzard will stop releasing expansions for the very rule that they cancel more games than they release and only want to release the best quality content and at some point the fact players are not staying around would imply that content is bad even if its not and blizzard puts huge effort into it.

I think for the face of the company and to not let it die out slowly wow will eventually stop getting expansions and I personally think that BFA is very possibly the last major expansion with only patches updates remakes of old dungions/raids possible in the future after woods.

I don't think classic will "kill" wow retail I honestly think it will probably increase the users on retail realms but I just think the decision to add classic servers is so odd and so iconic of a "end of a era" kind of decision that I really can see it being the "last" big wow release.

blizzard has historically released about 1 new game every year since the start of the 90s and with no new announcements of projects currently in the works I really think 2018 will be BFA 2019 will be classic and 2020 will be some new game that very likely could be a new MMO.

I just think its over for wow and blizzard wouldn't release classic if they intended to continue working on retail expansions.

What kind of drugs are you on? WoW is still a billion-dollars-a-year cashcow for Activision Blizzard. So until they get tired of making stupidly-huge amounts of money, I'm pretty damn sure that its not 'over for WoW'.

[Nnyco]

its just an easy way to milk money out of idiots who suckle off nostalgia

[Akka]

Now I am interested. What was the game philosophy that changed forever in WotLK.....? Less grindy? Can't be casualization, because...compared to other MMORPGs, that was how Classic was conceived..and boy...was it a hit.

That's just the usual binary thinking crap, as if there were only two states : "ever-more casualized" or "ever less casualized". That's like you can only either never eat and die of hunger, or eat more and more and die of stomach rupture, without there being a state of "just eat until you feel satiated, but no more".


The game philosophy of Vanilla was to have a world and let the player progress in it at their own pace and according to their own ability and time. It meant that some content was out of reach, but at the same time it meant there was always new content to strive for, and that whatever you did, it felt rewarding.
This is not how the game works anymore.

The game philosophy in WotLK is about maximizing content, and MAKE the player advance in said content at the pace set by the game. It means that content is consummed extremely fast ("content drought" wasn't a thing for anyone but the most bleeding edge raiders up to TBC, while it's been endemic since WotLK), with everyone crammed into the latest content released and everything but the latest patch being completely obsolete. There is no new content to strive for to reach, but only doing the same but on a higher difficulty level, and whatever is accomplished is just a sprint to achievement, and is rendered irrelevant the next patch with automated progression.
This is still the philosophy today.