After WoTLK classic, what wil lbe next?

[rpdrichard]

We're getting past expansions in classic for the first three expansions, but Cata is different to other expansions, before BfA it was seen battling with WoD the first place for the worst expansion.

So what do you think will happen? Will we get Cata classic or MoP classic?

[Nak88]

Cataclysm. Still a very solid expansion: great PvP rated and unrated, great raids (except DS), good heroic dungeons pre-nerf, interesting new leveling zones, nice lore, etc. Yes, it had some flaws but overall it was pretty good IMO. I'll definitely replay it.

[rpdrichard]

Cataclysm. Still a very solid expansion: great PvP rated and unrated, great raids (except DS), good heroic dungeons pre-nerf, interesting new leveling zones, nice lore, etc. Yes, it had some flaws but overall it was pretty good IMO. I'll definitely replay it.

Actually the dungeons and raid were terribly overtuned and barely offered any reward, that was one of the reasons the expansions drove so many players away.

The lore was a bit butchered and made deathwing look like a brainless dragon, the leveling zones felt entirely diconnected but except the underwater zones they we're good.

And DS was one of the worst raids with Green Jesus stealing the spotlight and ruining Thrall permanently.

[McNeil]

It wouldn't make sense to skip Cata and go straight to MoP. I'm sure more and more people will get nostalgic for Cata as time goes by and both tier 11 and 12 are quite solid, though going into 4.3 it will turn into a shitshow with one of the worst raids ever. Introducing the worst version of LFR, 3 new dungeons that are way easier than the release ones and reward way better gear, and transmog that nobody is going to bother with as its more of a retail thing.

Lets wait to see if we even get WotLK first.

[ablib]

Another dumb thread/poll. Cata came after Wrath.

[Linkedblade]

Actually the dungeons and raid were terribly overtuned and barely offered any reward, that was one of the reasons the expansions drove so many players away.

The lore was a bit butchered and made deathwing look like a brainless dragon, the leveling zones felt entirely diconnected but except the underwater zones they we're good.

And DS was one of the worst raids with Green Jesus stealing the spotlight and ruining Thrall permanently.

The dungeons weren't overturned, heroic dungeons actually had a change in difficulty.

But you entire post and poll makes zero sense.

"Should they skip this expansion if/when they do finish with wotlk classic, because I don't like it?"

[hulkgor]

I think the most likely choice is to 'restart' the whole classic ride, with a new go at Vanilla, then TBC, then WOTLK again. So, a cycle each 6 years.

Who knows, they might keep going forward with Cataclysm, MoP, etc... but i don't think it's very likely. We'd have Classic Era, TBC Classic Era, WOTLK Classic Era and Cataclysm all running at once.

Horrible poll by the way. They'd never bypass Cataclysm straight to MOP, and you're missing a very likely choice of a new, fresh, cycle.

[Kralljin]

1.They just do nothing and merely relaunch Classic / TBC / Wotlk over and over again
2.They launch Cata and then MoP - it's not like those expansions could run a 1,5year cycle similiar to Classic, TBC or Wotlk due to the lack of raid tiers
3.They actually touch the whole Classic+ thing and choose to develop new content in spirit of Classic (or possibly TBC / Wotlk for that matter)

They're not going to skip Cata if they choose to go beyond Wotlk, all you have to do with Cata is not stretch it.
T11&T12 are still solid Raid tiers and the Heroics are still renowned, the expansion just lacks content beyond that point, so just throw Cata out for 9-12 months and move on to MoP.

[Chadow]

Cata was the first expansion that made me skip one entire expansion (Pandaria).
If is down to personal preferece...i would stop in wrath.

[crusadernero]

We're getting past expansions in classic for the first three expansions, but Cata is different to other expansions, before BfA it was seen battling with WoD the first place for the worst expansion.

So what do you think will happen? Will we get Cata classic or MoP classic?

Its very open to be honest. Alot of it will probably come down to what the playerbase overall wants and what the general sentiment is. Normally, id say it should end with WotLK cause classic, BC & WotLK are more or less considered the "old" wow. Even in WotLK the game has changes that is considered a break from wow of the old. With cata, theres a whole lot of changes that belong in the "new" wow.

We are still years away from it though and to be honest, theres alot of potential for Blizzard to be creative with seasonal cycles with classic, BC & Wotlk. It doesnt really need to new content(raids/dungeons), but other things they can try out. If they dare to.

- - - Updated - - -

No they were perfectly tuned. The community was just full of trash players unable to accept theyd been getting carried for years.

Carried for years? You mean in classic dungeons? Or in the Wotlk HC dungeons? Classic dungeons were slow, but easy. WotLK HCs were a AoE masspull throughout the whole xpac, easy AF. BC HCs was more challenging but as time went on in BC, it got quite easy to.

Just remember that in WotLK HC dungeons were piss easy, everyone did them with ease. That was when automated LFG was put in the game and it made no changes, it was cakewalk in each run. Then enter cata with hard heroics, it was a huge shift in dungeon approach regarding difficulty.

Since then its been back and forth and we have ended up with m+, probably the best solution to it all.

[Kralljin]

No they were perfectly tuned.

Yes and No.

I think the trash itself was tuned fine, all you had to do was CC, dispel, interrupt and punished you accordingly if you didn't follow that - it was basic stuff, really.
The bosses however, i think they were overtuned for the roles they played within the gearing structure and LFD obviously being the primary tool to access Heroics.

I think back to Bosses like Erudax where losing a dps early into the fight was basically game over, because the adds that would spawn are that tightly tuned that you couldn't realistically kill them without a 3rd dps and then the healer would instantly get overwhelmed.

Early Cata Heroic Bosses were basically like your average Dungeon Boss in a high key M+ with the Tyrannical Affix, brutally punishing to a single mistake and then you go all the way back to 0, which obviously sucked due to CD's not being available etc..
Whereas on a trash wipe, i think failure analysis and remedy has always been a lot easier because it wasn't directly tied to single players ability to react to a given mechanic.

The community was just full of trash players unable to accept theyd been getting carried for years.

But that is also true, Wotlk, especially late Wotlk, seems to have really bred the mindset among a lot of players that goes "If i don't succeed, it's not my fault, it's the game's fault!".

Carried for years? You mean in classic dungeons? Or in the Wotlk HC dungeons? Classic dungeons were slow, but easy. WotLK HCs were a AoE masspull throughout the whole xpac, easy AF.

A fun little anecdote from a now former dev who talked about his experience on the Cata Beta regarding heroics:
He was a healer and queued up for Heroics.
He got into a dungeon.
Tank instantly pulled two Packs.
Died within seconds (because anybody who has played Cata heroics knew that this was a death sentence)
Tank blamed the Healer.
Tank leaves.
Next Tank joins in.
Does the same thing.
Blames the Healer.
Leaves.

In both Vanilla and TBC, the Tank would've been laughed out of the room if he seriously tried to pull two packs at once and then had the audacity to blame the Healer for letting him die.
But with Wotlk, that actually became the norm, because pulling two Packs if possible became standard pretty early on.

And it seems like some players had serious problems with adapting to this rather simple concept, so yes, in comparison to both Classic and TBC, i'd say Wotlk Heroics indeed "carried" some players.

[Merie]

Heroic was doable at launch it just didn't feel worth it because they replaced the lone epic you would get at the end in Wrath with just another random blue. Blues barely better than the ones you got in regular 85 dungeons for a fraction of the time. They'd take over an hour with pugs because every pull basically had to be perfect and heaven help you if you didn't have crowd control classes the more the better. Doable, certainly. Just lacking in proportionate reward that reflected its difficulty. I feel like if Blizzard had raised the challenge but kept the reward, it would probably have been fine. But instead they raised the challenge and nerfed the reward to boot. A one two punch for a lot of players' interest.

[ghostblade]

WotLK classic will have one problem though. the first raid tier is naxx. The main reason it was in WotLK was that almost nobody saw it. However now.....
So the real question is. Will a WotLK classic even be able to survive if people will have to do naxx again first.

After that..... maybe smarter to cut the rope then. With Cataclysm the whole Classic feel is kinda gone.

[Mojo03]

I doubt they’ll do more after wrath, at least for a while.

My guess is the seasons thing in vanilla classic is just testing the waters and they go full throttle with that concept after the original content goes stale, like they are with vanilla currently.

Just different seasons in the 3 classic games forever.

[crusadernero]

A fun little anecdote from a now former dev who talked about his experience on the Cata Beta regarding heroics:
He was a healer and queued up for Heroics.
He got into a dungeon.
Tank instantly pulled two Packs.
Died within seconds (because anybody who has played Cata heroics knew that this was a death sentence)
Tank blamed the Healer.
Tank leaves.
Next Tank joins in.
Does the same thing.
Blames the Healer.
Leaves.

In both Vanilla and TBC, the Tank would've been laughed out of the room if he seriously tried to pull two packs at once and then had the audacity to blame the Healer for letting him die.
But with Wotlk, that actually became the norm, because pulling two Packs if possible became standard pretty early on.

And it seems like some players had serious problems with adapting to this rather simple concept, so yes, in comparison to both Classic and TBC, i'd say Wotlk Heroics indeed "carried" some players.

I dont disagree with that, but thats more or less on Blizzard. Through a whole xpac(WotLK) HC dungeons were very accessible and considered a normal way to gear up. All players, no matter the skill, got used to chainpull AOE runs over a long period of time. Its a rough ask just to tell everyone "Hey, your way of gearing is now alot harder". Its not slower(Classic) or little harder(BC) than it used to be, its much harder.

With BC, all HC dungeons werent hard. Most of them were easy, few were hard. Most of the time you didnt even need to do the harder dungeons more than a handful of times.

Also we gotta count in that having hard pve content and automated LFG is not really a good fit. Thats also on Blizzard. Gearing up via dungeons has also always been a major thing(bar classic, after prebis before MC it was pointless) and very accessible.

This was also the time were spamming dungeons gave you justice/Valor that you could buy OK gear for. Easy content = Ok gear. While the best gear dropped in raids. Suddenly in Cata, even OK gear required clearing harder content. Doing this kind of content(dungeons) has always more or less been a casual approach to endgame gearing, raiding were for those that wanted to progress more serious. That also ofc changed with m+.

And lastly - wow was never intented to be a hardcore serious pve game in the first place. Its strengths was that at the core it was very accessible while having content for those that wanted to push themself. Really hard HCs connected with automated LFG is not a casual approach.

[Kralljin]

With BC, all HC dungeons werent hard. Most of them were easy, few were hard. Most of the time you didnt even need to do the harder dungeons more than a handful of times.

I think there is a difference between "not being hard" and "playing like a degenerate and still succeeding".

You still had to abide by some basic rules, don't pull too much, don't pull threat, watch out with AoE (at least if you didn't have a geared Prot Pally).

That's just the point, in both Vanilla and TBC, you still had to follow some basic rules in order to not wipe, but even that little modicum of difficulty flew out of the window with Wotlk.

[Luxeley]

Wotlk will probably be the last hurrah of the "wow classic" movement. No one is going to be knocking at the door for Cata which throws a wrench into everything. There may be interest in MOP or Legion, but the reception will be warm and certainly not gangbusters. The big Kahuna is WOTLK then everything is anti-climatic from there. Although MOP has aged rather well over the years, especially from a class design and pvp standpoint. I am curious to see if they somehow leap frog Cata cause I don't believe the excitement and interest is there for Cata.

[Hallheal]

It will go back to Classic, big viscous circle!!

[agentsi]

We're getting past expansions in classic for the first three expansions, but Cata is different to other expansions, before BfA it was seen battling with WoD the first place for the worst expansion.

So what do you think will happen? Will we get Cata classic or MoP classic?

So because you didn't like it, Blizzard shouldn't do it?

Sound about this day in age of young kids and cancel culture. They want what they want, and anyone who wants anything else is wrong and should be ignored/outcast/lockedaway/killed.

Cool.

[Video Games]

Cata is my second favorite expansion and mop is my second least favorite so I'd rather they go with cata