Cataclysm Classic goes against the original intended reason for Classic

[DeltrusDisc]

Are you drunk?
Tier 11 was awesome, it was bad for hardcore progression bc they didnt knew where to start back then.
And bro.. Firelands.. one of the best raids to ever exist declared as a "joke"?

Im sure you never raided in any of both tiers.

Oh, I did raid in both. Hardcore, 3 dedicated nights and a 4th optional night with off-nights dedicated to alts.
I have some great memories from then, but they are more for who I was raiding with, not the content itself.
I saw that Firelands poster Blizz had up at their HQ that made Firelands look 10x as big as it was and was so hyped. What we got was this stupid field of "lava" and rock that was just boring to look at. I think Firelands was indeed, a joke. Sure, the bosses had some neat designs here and there, but overall, the raid was not that fun for me and ultimately I quit WoW a couple months into Firelands. I have videos of raiding footage from then, if you'd like to see it.

[Flurryfang]

Oh, I did raid in both. Hardcore, 3 dedicated nights and a 4th optional night with off-nights dedicated to alts.
I have some great memories from then, but they are more for who I was raiding with, not the content itself.
I saw that Firelands poster Blizz had up at their HQ that made Firelands look 10x as big as it was and was so hyped. What we got was this stupid field of "lava" and rock that was just boring to look at. I think Firelands was indeed, a joke. Sure, the bosses had some neat designs here and there, but overall, the raid was not that fun for me and ultimately I quit WoW a couple months into Firelands. I have videos of raiding footage from then, if you'd like to see it.

Well, i guess you are not wrong in that it proberly sucked for you, but if you look with a bigger lense, like at all of cata, there was a wide hold in raid critique while Firelands was out. Sure, its layout was disappointing, but normally what makes raids work, are primarily boss design and layout, and in that Firelands succeeded.

[Nefastus]

It isn't though, and the guy whose job in Cataclsym was to pour over the retention data has told us as much:

Developers do care if you stop playing their game and they want to know why. However, for games like WoW and LoL, the answers are almost always “I have less time to play now (job/school/family” and “My friends don’t play anymore.” (I’m basing that on having seen a lot of data - it’s not super open to debate.)

Dropping a game because of a specific design change (despite what you might read on forums / Reddit) is actually pretty rare. I know it happens, but if you’re stack ranking the reasons why people quit, those specific responses end up being so far down the list that it is hard for a development team to take actionable feedback.

The only copium here is on your part, my guy.

Yes, the opinion of a employee trying to defend his company is all for sure. The fact is, cata was the started of the downfall, its when WoW lost more players than it gained. The expansion was not considered good. Most of times a player stop playing a game because guess what, they not having fun. If I decided to follow your argument I could say the new Saints Row is a sucess because not selling well doesnt mean the game is bad its just people dont have time to play so they didnt buy. Come on lol.

To think I lived to see people pretending WoW didnt start to bleed subs in Cata lmao.

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When you use the word "copium" that means you can't debate. As I said, and this is not in disupute, people leave for 1,000's of reasons that aren't "the game is bad". Those are facts i gave no matter how you try to spin the numbers and act like people only leave for one reason. Not my problem you keep being dishonest.

People might leave a game for several reasons thats true but the fact is, WoW started bleeding subs in Cata. Not before. Thats the truth. Now if you want to pretend WoW players stopped playing due to being abducted by aliens or whatever its up to you. When a game that only gained players starts to losing them its clearly not a sign of sucess. Thats all.

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If you cant take the truth dont go to a public forum

Your lost reply was pure trolling. You cant take the truth that WoW started to losing subs in Cata when its a fact with numbers backing it up, who are you to say about taking the truth.

[Relapses]

Yes, the opinion of a employee trying to defend his company is all for sure. The fact is, cata was the started of the downfall, its when WoW lost more players than it gained. The expansion was not considered good. Most of times a player stop playing a game because guess what, they not having fun. If I decided to follow your argument I could say the new Saints Row is a sucess because not selling well doesnt mean the game is bad its just people dont have time to play so they didnt buy. Come on lol.

To think I lived to see people pretending WoW didnt start to bleed subs in Cata lmao.

Couple things here:

1.) Greg Street left Blizzard in 2014. This was posted on his personal blog in 2017. He had absolutely no reason to "defend" Blizzard. The question was whether changing video games costs players and the answer to this question isn't a binary "players left because the game sucked." This is the easy answer people on forums love to insist is an universal truth. Reality is, sadly, less interesting.

2.) Nobody is saying subscriptions didn't go down in Cataclysm. But since we do not know what Blizzard's retention data actually looks like we have no way of knowing whether players were leaving in Cataclysm because of design decisions made or because the game simply had fewer new subscribers and roughly the same retention rate as WotLK before it. (We do not know this data as Blizzard has never shared it and the article I linked from GS is the only time anybody who's worked at Blizzard has ever spoken about it publicly. But simply as an example, if 5 million new players join and 5 million old players leave in a given quarter, the subscription chart would show no change. If 4 million players join but 5 million players leave, you'll see a loss of 1 million players on the chart but the retention rate for the quarter is the same as the quarter before. This isn't "bleeding subs," but rather a contrition in the amount of new players generated. You can argue that fewer people joining means the game isn't as appealing to new players but for a video game like WoW there's such a thing as market saturation which means the only direction it can go after reaching it is down.)

[Recovery]

Cata classic would also be most awkward to make... what dungeons do you release?

The fairly tightly tuned ones on launch or the ones with gutted abilities and a 30-50% nerf?

What for the love of god do you do with transmog? Once it's in do you still seperate items earned in classic as an alternative time line or do you make it cross over to retail?

There are far more questions that need to be answered for cata then classic through wotlk just with how weird an expansion it was.

Why would you separate items earned in classic? Why would it need to be an alternative timeline? The games arent stand alone. All of the same content is there in cata that there was in classic, just altered and revamped.

[nVIDIA]

lmao at classic players wanting Mop, which was literally the worst received expansion before launch, bringing funny pandas and yak shit. Overall it hasnt brought anything.

are you stupid or what? mop brings : challenge mode , pet battle , brawler guild , proving ground , flex system

[rrayy]

Your lost reply was pure trolling. You cant take the truth that WoW started to losing subs in Cata when its a fact with numbers backing it up, who are you to say about taking the truth.

Again, people leave for 1,000's of reasons. SO, unless you can show me they all left because the expansion was bad, you have nothing to back up anything. You contiinue to claim they all left because the expansion was bad. Prove it. All you are doing right now is spinning numbers.

[Recovery]

Couple things here:

1.) Greg Street left Blizzard in 2014. This was posted on his personal blog in 2017. He had absolutely no reason to "defend" Blizzard. The question was whether changing video games costs players and the answer to this question isn't a binary "players left because the game sucked." This is the easy answer people on forums love to insist is an universal truth. Reality is, sadly, less interesting.

2.) Nobody is saying subscriptions didn't go down in Cataclysm. But since we do not know what Blizzard's retention data actually looks like we have no way of knowing whether players were leaving in Cataclysm because of design decisions made or because the game simply had fewer new subscribers and roughly the same retention rate as WotLK before it. (We do not know this data as Blizzard has never shared it and the article I linked from GS is the only time anybody who's worked at Blizzard has ever spoken about it publicly. But simply as an example, if 5 million new players join and 5 million old players leave in a given quarter, the subscription chart would show no change. If 4 million players join but 5 million players leave, you'll see a loss of 1 million players on the chart but the retention rate for the quarter is the same as the quarter before. This isn't "bleeding subs," but rather a contrition in the amount of new players generated. You can argue that fewer people joining means the game isn't as appealing to new players but for a video game like WoW there's such a thing as market saturation which means the only direction it can go after reaching it is down.)

Couple things here:

1.) Greg Street left Blizzard in 2014. This was posted on his personal blog in 2017. He had absolutely no reason to "defend" Blizzard. The question was whether changing video games costs players and the answer to this question isn't a binary "players left because the game sucked." This is the easy answer people on forums love to insist is an universal truth. Reality is, sadly, less interesting.

2.) Nobody is saying subscriptions didn't go down in Cataclysm. But since we do not know what Blizzard's retention data actually looks like we have no way of knowing whether players were leaving in Cataclysm because of design decisions made or because the game simply had fewer new subscribers and roughly the same retention rate as WotLK before it. (We do not know this data as Blizzard has never shared it and the article I linked from GS is the only time anybody who's worked at Blizzard has ever spoken about it publicly. But simply as an example, if 5 million new players join and 5 million old players leave in a given quarter, the subscription chart would show no change. If 4 million players join but 5 million players leave, you'll see a loss of 1 million players on the chart but the retention rate for the quarter is the same as the quarter before. This isn't "bleeding subs," but rather a contrition in the amount of new players generated. You can argue that fewer people joining means the game isn't as appealing to new players but for a video game like WoW there's such a thing as market saturation which means the only direction it can go after reaching it is down.)

This PERFECTLY explains it.

To be honest, I think MOST of the people, not ALL, but MOST that hate on cataclysm, didnt ACTUALLY experience the expansion.

I played all aspects of the game. Leveling was easy. I had so many alts. Raid mechanics were starting to get extremely interesting. PVP was the best its EVER been, until season 11 and it was still good then, just crazy op pvp items.

I have seen very few people that ACTUALLY EXPERIENCED the game call it bad. People have certain details they didnt like, etc.. But thats all expansions.

[Piesor]

The initial reason does not count when you find a new cashcow with low effort. Continue buying those boosts and you will replay Shadowlands in a couple of years....

[cozzri]

The original reason most ever asked for "classic/Vanilla" realms, was because we lost the old zones and, at least in the case of early Wrath and prior, less LFD/LFR implementation/ no LFR.

Unless they do something substantial, I really personally don't see the reason for Cata Classic, though I guess ultimately it can be a way for people to live/relive Cataclysm, if they so please, but let's be real, Cata was the start of the overall downfall.

I can't help but say I'd love a second chance to play MoP during the expansion, as there was a lot of fun during it, but I missed most of it.

How are you all hoping Blizzard treats Cata "in a classic way"?

What they need to do is merge classic with retail and vastly expand Chromie Time.

When a new expansion comes out, a snapshot of your character is saved for the previous expansion, and you can return to that version of the game at-will through Chromie. Want to be level 60 again and do old raids at their original difficulty, tall to Chromie, and she puts you into your saved state for Classic. Want to Timeless Isles at intended difficulty? Chromie! You MoP save is there with all of your ToT raid gear.

Its a great idea really, keep your characters, tou already can choose what expansion to level in, why not take it a step further. But maybe all this defeats the purpose... People want to have that social collective rush of a fresh start, leveling new with others, etc... Turning on your max level capped toon is different.... Oh well, not an easy fix, and you can't make everyone happy.

I'm not nostalgic for playing classic, hell, half the people I enjoyed the game with back then are dead now; its chasing an experience that's no longer there.

[Khaza-R]

To be honest, I think MOST of the people, not ALL, but MOST that hate on cataclysm, didnt ACTUALLY experience the expansion.

I experienced it. I imagine most people here did as well as Cata was probably when MMO-C was its most popular.

"Hard heroics" are incredibly overrated by the community and the CC will get stale less a month into the hypothetical expansion. The complete flip flop they did on difficulty was jarring and frustrating. The only good point was the patch with ZA/ZG.

PvP was enjoyable. Probably the best feature about the expansion.

Raids were fairly meh overall. Firelands was decent. BoT / BWD were mid tier. DS was awful.

Started out okay. Ended poorly. Overall not a bad expansion but nothing I miss.

[DeltrusDisc]

What they need to do is merge classic with retail and vastly expand Chromie Time.

When a new expansion comes out, a snapshot of your character is saved for the previous expansion, and you can return to that version of the game at-will through Chromie. Want to be level 60 again and do old raids at their original difficulty, tall to Chromie, and she puts you into your saved state for Classic. Want to Timeless Isles at intended difficulty? Chromie! You MoP save is there with all of your ToT raid gear.

Its a great idea really, keep your characters, tou already can choose what expansion to level in, why not take it a step further. But maybe all this defeats the purpose... People want to have that social collective rush of a fresh start, leveling new with others, etc... Turning on your max level capped toon is different.... Oh well, not an easy fix, and you can't make everyone happy.

I'm not nostalgic for playing classic, hell, half the people I enjoyed the game with back then are dead now; its chasing an experience that's no longer there.

Now here's an idea I absolutely love. I wonder how difficult this would be to accomplish.

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I experienced it. I imagine most people here did as well as Cata was probably when MMO-C was its most popular.

"Hard heroics" are incredibly overrated by the community and the CC will get stale less a month into the hypothetical expansion. The complete flip flop they did on difficulty was jarring and frustrating. The only good point was the patch with ZA/ZG.

PvP was enjoyable. Probably the best feature about the expansion.

Raids were fairly meh overall. Firelands was decent. BoT / BWD were mid tier. DS was awful.

Started out okay. Ended poorly. Overall not a bad expansion but nothing I miss.

Gasp, well surely you didn't actually play Cata!

You'd think these people could take one look at my join date to MMO-C, a website that's historically been 98% WoW and figure out that I've at least been in the game since WotLK - I can say I happily joined in mid-TBC, Jan 2008. Then I lurked on MMO-C for some time in 2009 before finally creating an account. People don't like considering the fact that the expansion that STARTED with the highest number of subs (i.e. really those were Wrath holdover, assuming Cata was going to be just as good, because at that point WoW had never had a bad expansion before, crazy thought) actually then lost a substantial amount of subs and, shock, God forbid some of those people are here among us RIGHT. NOW.

Wow! Shock and awe!

[Nefastus]

Again, people leave for 1,000's of reasons. SO, unless you can show me they all left because the expansion was bad, you have nothing to back up anything. You contiinue to claim they all left because the expansion was bad. Prove it. All you are doing right now is spinning numbers.

When we talk about games its quite safe to say people, or at least most of them, leave when its not enjoyable. What we can say for sure is, Cataclysm was the start of the downfall of WoW, when it stopped growing and started to bleed players. That phenomenon started there, its just a fact.

Now for the reasons, sure we can't say everyone left due to not having fun but thats assumed its the most common reason. Thats how games work. Otherwise we can pretend all other expansions were great too, Warlords, battle for azeroth, shadowlands and its was just a coincidence people left.

In the end there is just a fact, Cataclysm was when WoW started to bleed subs.

[Relapses]

When we talk about games its quite safe to say people, or at least most of them, leave when its not enjoyable. What we can say for sure is, Cataclysm was the start of the downfall of WoW, when it stopped growing and started to bleed players. That phenomenon started there, its just a fact.

But all good, we can follow your logic and apply to everything else and call it a sucess. Warlords of Draenor wasnt bad, people left to fight in the center of the Earth wars. Battle of Azeroth wasn't bad, people left due to alien abductions. That new battlefield game didnt lose players because they desliked it too, they had to colonize jupiter.

Its amazing how we got people in here trying to deny a well know fact, that WoW started to bleed subs in Cata.

Do you honestly think it's normal for people to pay for a subscription game for 20 years straight? People leave and come back to WoW for all sorts of reasons but almost none of them have to do with game design choices. The reality is a lot more boring than, "whoops, we nerfed Warlocks too much and that cost us 10% of our playerbase!" That's all we're saying here.

[klaps_05]

Sure the original reason was the zones, but we can build on that and make every version of wow available as current content. People are against it because of their insecurities that they favorite classic version is THE BEST and noone could possibly like other classic versions.

[Xilurm]

Cata classic being a thing would mean the old world would disappear again, which was one of the points of getting Classic in the first place.

The old world design isn't wanted because of nostalgia, it's a completely different game designs. And believe it or not there's people that prefer that compared to the very on-rails experience that Cataclysm gives you.

[Aeula]

I do wonder how much of a snowball effect Blizzard releasing sub numbers had. A lotta people point at Cata as the point WoW died because sub numbers started to drop but I honestly don't think Cata is entirely to blame for that, it's really not that different to WotLK.

[Sentynel]

are you stupid or what? mop brings : challenge mode , pet battle , brawler guild , proving ground , flex system

Can't wait to do my pet battles in MOP classic.

[kiruz]

Again, people leave for 1,000's of reasons. SO, unless you can show me they all left because the expansion was bad, you have nothing to back up anything. You contiinue to claim they all left because the expansion was bad. Prove it. All you are doing right now is spinning numbers.

Also people join game for 1000's of reasons.
But If the ratio changed in cata it means that people are less interested in playing that version of the game than the one before. 2 mln less people were playing the game in the end of expansion vs beginning. Mostly, when people stop playing any game, they do it because their interest of it is no longer there. They lost interest of 2 mln people. Nitpicking specific reason for each one of player is dumb, because most just didn't enjoy the game anymore as they used to or wanted to. You could see it also through forums. I know because I played back then. That's how you can determine if idea is good or bad at that scale.

[Nefastus]

Do you honestly think it's normal for people to pay for a subscription game for 20 years straight? People leave and come back to WoW for all sorts of reasons but almost none of them have to do with game design choices. The reality is a lot more boring than, "whoops, we nerfed Warlocks too much and that cost us 10% of our playerbase!" That's all we're saying here.

Most obvious reason for people quitting a game is when its no longer fun. We talking about millions here. Otherwise we can pretend all the failed expansions were great people just wanted a break.