Would you play on a linear progression server?

[Shelly]

Imagine a server where they remove all catchup gear.

You level from 1-60 and can do so anywhere there's a starting zone. So your character could start in WoD coming out of the black gate, start in WotLK arriving in Borean Tundra or arriving in Pandaria, etc. With level scaling it should be possible, though difficult, for them to do.

Once you hit level 60 you can start raiding Onyxia and MC, when the server is fresh that's all there is for raids.

Then it would follow a release schedule similar to WoW Classic. Except this time after Naxx is released after a few months go by they'd release Gruul, Kara and Magtheridon, after that The Eye and Serpentshrine, then Black Temple, then Sunwell Plateau, then either LK Naxx or skip it and go right to Ulduar.

All raids made purely into their heroic version. Raids that rewarded extra item-level gear for hard-modes just give an extra piece of gear.

All gear is set to scale linearly from MC levels. Any overpowered trinkets - Legendaries from Legion, end of expansion trinkets from Cataclysm, WoD and Legion, etc - would just remain OP until such a time as they are replaceable by something of higher item level.

Talents for character progression would be at Blizzard's pleasure, whether they decided to just do an old-school talent tree or stay with the new talent system.

Basically your character is level capped and any and all progression comes from raids. All dungeons are accessible but all cap out with blue loot of an item level lower than MC.

Of course some stuff would probably need to be reitemized - specifically all the old tier gear and trinkets to put them above dungeon gear of TBC and beyond where you'd have stats plus an on-use or a proc (most classic trinkets are pure stat, use or proc).

[Somewhatconcerned]

Sounds super boring trying to rehash the last 15 years. Hard pass.

[Pwellzor]

Imagine a server where they remove all catchup gear.

You level from 1-60 and can do so anywhere there's a starting zone. So your character could start in WoD coming out of the black gate, start in WotLK arriving in Borean Tundra or arriving in Pandaria, etc. With level scaling it should be possible, though difficult, for them to do.

Once you hit level 60 you can start raiding Onyxia and MC, when the server is fresh that's all there is for raids.

Then it would follow a release schedule similar to WoW Classic. Except this time after Naxx is released after a few months go by they'd release Gruul, Kara and Magtheridon, after that The Eye and Serpentshrine, then Black Temple, then Sunwell Plateau, then either LK Naxx or skip it and go right to Ulduar.

All raids made purely into their heroic version. Raids that rewarded extra item-level gear for hard-modes just give an extra piece of gear.

All gear is set to scale linearly from MC levels. Any overpowered trinkets - Legendaries from Legion, end of expansion trinkets from Cataclysm, WoD and Legion, etc - would just remain OP until such a time as they are replaceable by something of higher item level.

Talents for character progression would be at Blizzard's pleasure, whether they decided to just do an old-school talent tree or stay with the new talent system.

Basically your character is level capped and any and all progression comes from raids. All dungeons are accessible but all cap out with blue loot of an item level lower than MC.

Of course some stuff would probably need to be reitemized - specifically all the old tier gear and trinkets to put them above dungeon gear of TBC and beyond where you'd have stats plus an on-use or a proc (most classic trinkets are pure stat, use or proc).

In your vision, would you require people to raid to continue? For example, in order to get to ulduar raiding, would you reasonably have to get your gear from the previous raid, or would you be able to work through the quest lines to progress to the non-raid quests surrounding ulduar?

I like the concept, it would be difficult to implement, but it's cool.

[Wyrt]

A server like that would kill itself.

It'd work fine for the initial wave of people, but anyone coming in later is going to have an extremely hard time finding groups to do older content for them to progress. Which would effectively remove new people from joining. Then anyone from the initial wave who decided to take a break would come back and find they can't catch up and then quit for good. The ever dwindling player base would be the death sentence of such a realm.

[Shelly]

In your vision, would you require people to raid to continue? For example, in order to get to ulduar raiding, would you reasonably have to get your gear from the previous raid, or would you be able to work through the quest lines to progress to the non-raid quests surrounding ulduar?

I like the concept, it would be difficult to implement, but it's cool.

Once the content is out anyone can access it.

The ones there from the beginning would certainly have an advantage but if you came in several years down the line you'd have a rough time but if you got a few carries or made friends with the right group you'd certainly get on equal footing without too much difficulty.

And it's mostly thought exercise. :-)

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A server like that would kill itself.

It'd work fine for the initial wave of people, but anyone coming in later is going to have an extremely hard time finding groups to do older content for them to progress. Which would effectively remove new people from joining. Then anyone from the initial wave who decided to take a break would come back and find they can't catch up and then quit for good. The ever dwindling player base would be the death sentence of such a realm.

I agree, but also you could easily end up with high-level characters slumming it, some people running old stuff for good trinkets that they'd like or old sets for transmog.

[Lollis]

The ones there from the beginning would certainly have an advantage but if you came in several years down the line you'd have a rough time but if you got a few carries or made friends with the right group you'd certainly get on equal footing without too much difficulty.

Which is the reason that raiding changed and catchup systems were implemented more; people don't like carrying.
In theory raid progression gearing is a perfectly fine system, in practice it just doesn't work.

What happened in linear progression is that it forced Guilds to slow down progression so as to gear people up by carrying when they inevitably lost people for various reasons, or simply because they needed another of x class. If they didn't carry, they poached from other guilds who in turn had to either carry themselves with a new player or better yet, just poach from another guild.

The guilds and players at the bottom stay at the bottom, the players who want to progress have to jump away or just hope that the core is strong enough.

Catchup gear may have gotten to the point where it is too much, I'd certainly agree on that, especially with stupid stuff like Titanforging. But returning to the awful linear progression of old is not good for the game, or for players who actually want to complete the content before the next expansion is released.

We moved away from the Vanilla, TBC & WotLK (somewhat) style raid progression systems for a reason.

[Twdft]

The ones there from the beginning would certainly have an advantage but if you came in several years down the line you'd have a rough time but if you got a few carries or made friends with the right group you'd certainly get on equal footing without too much difficulty.

That isn't different from catch-up gear other than requiring a raid to get it instead of catching up solo now.

Why do you think it's better to require a raid?

[Relapses]

This doesn't provide any real benefit over what a legitimate Legacy realm would provide. Depending on how well Classic turns out long term we'll likely see Blizzard move in that direction which makes an idea like this largely redundant.

[parasight]

This server idea reminds me of a timewalking pug raid. Two-thirds of the way through people leave and then it's very unlikely to get up and running again.

And no. Bad idea.