What If... They SKIP BC?

[Reyuna]

If we ever actually get to Wrath servers. I will die a happy man.

[Beazy]

They wont. BC and WotLK are goldmines just waiting to be tapped.

[Relapses]

No you are not looking at the relevant information. The key point is 1-2 millions growth per year for 48 months drastically stopped at the same time as an event happened. This event is a new expansion. Also a subscription lasts at least 1 month (1-2 months are enough to try the product) and somehow the growth flattened exactly around 1 month after the event. Like it couldnt be more obvious than that lol.
On top of it (if we look at the critics and leave the analysis alone), most of the things people dislike about retail wow has been introduced in WoTLK. A new annoying class, looking for group, death of social, old content totally irrelevant, different raid difficulties and... So you even have the forums to help you guess the obvious conclusion from the graph analysis lol.

Ah, right. Forums. Because forums tell a better story than first hand accounts from developers who have seen the retention data, right?

Let’s talk about this from another angle, shall we? When talking subscription models there has to be a ceiling somewhere. There are only so many given people who will pay for a subscription service at one time. That’s market saturation. I think you and I agree here. Now, in said example, let’s say attrition is 5 percent. This means in any given month, 5 percent of players stop playing. Not because of class changes. Not because of a new expansion. And certainly because Blizzard made the fucking LFG. They just stopped playing. This happened in WotLK. It happened in Cata, MoP and every expansion since.

This happened in Vanilla and TBC, too. The difference between Vanilla/TBC versus post-WotLK is that for the 5 percent who quit playing, the game added more than enough new subscribers to replace the ones that quit. (Hence, growth.) My speculation is that new player generation remained about equal through WotLK, it was simply offset by the players who quit. Growth didn’t stagnate, it plateaued. And in a subscription model, a plateau at the highest possible level — market saturation — is the best outcome for the business.

After WotLK I also speculate that attrition remained about the same as it was before and during the game’s periods of growth. The key difference is that there were fewer new players generated in the post-WotLK expansions to offset the ones who naturally attrited for whatever reason.

I’ll admit I could be wrong. But when the developers say time and time again that specific changes don’t typically correlate to subscription trends, I’m inclined to believe them since they have data we, as players, will never be privy to.

What you’re implying is simply impossible to know. It’s impossible for me to know as well but I feel like it’s a far less intellectually dishonest argument to give Blizzard the benefit of the doubt than it is to simply accuse the developers of “ruining the game” because natural attrition correlates to changes you personally disagree with.

tl,dr - Subscriber growth and fluctuation trends aren’t a simply up/down metric. Attrition occurs regardless, as does new player generation. If 10 million WoW players quit and 10 million other WoW players join, you’ll see the same changes in subscriber levels as you would if only 100 players quit and 100 joined. Attempting to correlate attrition trends without knowing the actionable data which fuels it is pointless, just as it’s pointless to try to insinuate your own personal distaste for certain changes is correlated to data which shows declines in subscriber levels.

tl,dr,tl,dr - Sub level arguments are stupid.

[Will]

These kind of discussions are so moot. We have a successful, known quantity in releasing BC and then Wrath.
All this mixing and mashing makes it into a different game entirely. An unknown quantity.

I want to revisit TBC next. I love flying. I love everything about TBC. I would love to revisit Wrath. I love that. The only thing I really didn't like was the LFD feature added in patch 3.3

All this Classic+ stuff? It's just blegh. It could be great. It could also suck utterly. And besides, as a BC lover, the idea of skipping it upsets me

- - - Updated - - -

If we ever actually get to Wrath servers. I will die a happy man.

We probably will. As others pointed out, these expansions are literally gold mines waiting to be tapped. Minimal development work and man-hours, for eassssssy money.

[gutnbrg]

How crazy is it that blizz is making insane money off of things that we already played years ago...I wish i was a blizzard owner. That being said, id def play tbc and wrath if im still playing that far into the future. Been playing for 14yrs already, dont know how much longer I have in me.

[bmjclark]

TBC is literally what vanilla wow tried to be in terms of class design imo. Hybrid dps actually bring valuable buffs to the raid, tanks all have their niche and healers have distinct strengths. I'd be extremely disappointed if they skipped tbc and honestly would just skip a wrath server anyways because most of the raid tiers in wrath suck anyways.

[Bigbamboozal]

This is a dumb thread...like yah, blizzard, not redoing tbc because they don't want money m'kay, that'll happen...
(hey blizz tbc redo, take my money ((also wrath)))

[ArCaN1St]

I would never play classic because i didnt like vanilla back in 2005, but i would certainly play the classic BC on fixed 2.4.3 patch without the massive bugfest of 2.0.12.
BC had a load of bugs and bad balance and design decisions, but improved massively in late 2007 and 2008.

[Netherling]

Vanilla WoW was basically a beta (think of all the useless specs). TBC was when WoW really worked.

[pkusa]

Hope they never release any of the old expansions so you classic weirdos would just disappear.

[ReVnX]

For me TBC is miles better than WotLK, and still better than Vanilla. It has always been my favourite expansion... So no skip

[Lochton]

In my opinion, BC is a 'side story' and going to another planet so early in the life of an MMO was probably a mistake (don't get me wrong I love BC)...

What if Blizzard changed it up a bit. What if after Classic; they move straight to Wrath? BUT... Instead of grinding it out to 70 or 80 they introduce some other type of time constraint and leave us at 60... And never introduce flying mounts; or dungeon finder... Obviously a few aspects would have to be changed, places that require flying, etc.

So Wrath would just end up being a really long extension of Classic, basically.

I know demons are central to the Warcraft story, but to me it just feels like Blizzard went about it all wrong.

Wouldn't make sense..

[Carmion]

What I'm saying is, they get rid of the go go go.

Not gonna reply on the "which expansion was best and why" discussion, as this statement seems to be a driving factor behind your idea.

And to be absolutely clear: They wouldn´t. It does not matter at all, which expansion level you´d take today. "Go go go is not an expansion, it´s a people". We already see more than enough of it in Classic and you will not get it out of peoples heads.

Sure, some future game systems add ease of use features to supplement this mentality, but in the end, it is the players, not the game.

[Rigald]

Didn’t most if not all of that come with Cata? I don’t remember any of that in Wrath.

Nope sir, it was deffo in Wrath

[aeuhe4yxzhds]

Thing is, you are not in the minority. Wrath is hailed as a peak wow expack, yet it brought vendor purples, easier raids, dungeon finder, and many of the other things that retail haters cite as the downfall of the expansion. The rose tinted glasses just blind them to it. Its easier to hate BFA because those reasons, instead of acknowledge that those problems started from Wrath onward.

I think you misspelled TBC. Cause it was TBC that started all the bullshit like catching up and vendor epics.

[Mermeoth]

Imho Outland sucked and yet TBC was my favourite expansion. I would love if they implemented TBC changes and retail graphics into vanilla and gave us new raids similiar to TBC, while still keeping old world and raids relevant.

I think you misspelled TBC. Cause it was TBC that started all the bullshit like catching up and vendor epics.

This is false. They have already started with catching mechanics during vanilla. Dungeon sets are good example.
These cathching mechanics just escaleted with every new expansion.

[Frolk]

If they skip BC there would be rioting in the streets, im looking more forward for BC than Classic, easier to play the spec i adore the most, FIRE

[NatePsy]

They'd be missing out on a huge business opportunity as BC was outstanding and had a fair amount of subscribers playing at that time.

[Gurluas]

TBC was basically vanilla perfected before they started catering to casuals in Wrath and altered how the game worked.
The only part of TBC I disliked was some of the lore and PVP.

Making BGs useless and only focusing on Arenas, adding resillience thus making PVE gear useless, and making the PvP titles unobtainable is all stuff I really disliked about TBC.
The rest though was good though, lots of new gameplay additions without compromising the old.

[Lerufz]

Hm... skipping an expansion that many would consider is one of the best....

Pretty sure this is a recipe for riot, the player backlash would be pretty immense.