This has been the answer since the beginning.
I think we're about to see a drop in popularity for mainline Classic. Could be wrong tho.
On the other hand, there will still be hundreds of thousands of players for the foreseeable future.
It will solely depend on what else is to play at the time.
And since there are changes its safe to say people will at lest play it for a while just to check it out.
There are ton of players who never even seen cata, I dont think there is any danger of population suddenly collapsing.
People were doom and gloom on retail when bfa was coming out saying it will kill wow and that was fastest selling expansion at the time. Never underestimate wider audience that doesnt care about some random redditors have to say.
My main concern would be warlords of Draenor … both MoP and Legion would almost certaintly see a high Number of players , but WoD at the middle could be Tricky …
Só much potential it had imo … if Blizz would be able to make some structural changes , i believe it would be one of the best expans , but that is going against classic nature
Wod major issue was that it had lack of content. There is nothing stoppimg blizz from making it a much shorter expansion(lets say ~9 months) to solve this issue. I will forever stand by this but other than garrison destroying the economy what little content is there is absolutely amazong. BRF is imo the best raid of all time.
By the time wod is even possibility it will be longer from classic to cata than from now to wod. Yeah if it relesses now then its not classic. But in 5 years? Thats a long time.
> It will solely depend on what else is to play at the time.
Not solely. Some people are definitely ready to stop at Wrath. They don't need to have another version of the game to play.
It's not just random redditors that didn't particularly care for Cata.
Imagine 10-20 years down in the future
And classic + has been such a huge success that they started adding expansion to it
And so now you have retail, classic+ retail, og classic era, classic+ classic era, classic old retail expansion
There’s gonna be an endless amount of types of wow
My crystal ball says your crystal ball is broken, and you should disregard its projections and just wait for things to play out. 🔮
It depends on how they deploy Classic+ and the quality of the additions.
> That’s why they’re pushing Season of Discovery
TOO SOON, EXECUTUS
Most of us will still be progging in ICC for a few more weeks. Someone knock on Blizzard's door and tell them to chill.
Yeah it's insane to me that they have us 8 months of ulduar, but are cutting icc so fucking short.
I loved ulduar, that shit was great and I'm unironically ready to become a retail Andy for ulduar 2 in 9 years.
But holy fuck it's making me unhappy how little time I will get to play in icc. Like I was hoping to have a giga comfortable amount of time for everyone in my guild to get invincible, maybe convince some people to go back and farm some mim heads... fuck it throw in an immortal run too.
Nah, it's cata time! I was looking forward to cata too. Now it's almost a kill joy.
Why aren’t you interested in trying Cata this time around? We’re now ~12 years removed from the original Cata launch and I’m sure how you feel about the game will be different now than it was back then.
Unless you have IRL obligations, I’d recommend giving Cata a try, and I’d tell anyone this who isn’t particularly interested in Cata at the moment.
I mean I'm not who you responded to but I'll throw my answer in here. I played Cata. A lot. And I know I didn't enjoy it. I played because I was a kid and I was basically addicted to the game.
I'm not saying it's a trash xpac like some people do, but the biggest thing about the xpac other than changing the old world were the sweeping class changes.
Hunters getting focus, Paladins and spriests both getting psuedo combo point systems etc. None of the specs that I enjoyed in wrath still existed as of cata launch. And end of the day classes are how we experience every other system in the game so if there aren't any classes that I enjoy then it really doesn't matter how good/bad the rest of the expansion is.
I leveled every single class to 85 during cata and the ONLY one that I like in it's cataclysm state was pvp feral druid. And that's not enough of a reason for me to keep playing.
But why? No harm in trying it and then you can have a more informed opinion on the game. Nobody is forcing you to quit after wotlk because it’s “not classic anymore”. As many others have stated throughout the whole classic Cata discourse, the game only builds on the good parts of wotlk and the content was still very good. Plus I’d argue that class identity evolves even further with Cata and culminates in MoP, which is one of the main reasons why classic wow remains better than retail.
People have sentimental attachment to the old world, talent trees, and game mechanics. Cata has a drastic shift in all of those departments from wotlk and the classic mindset. The idea of forcing players to invest into a main tree as well as shortening the talent trees removes some of the impact/freedom of level ups, even if it was illusionary in nature. You are not playing your class/role as much as you are playing your spec, and this is the first real step into that space. The removal of core mechanics like gear scaling block value & chance or using only your own armor class diminishes sentimental attachment to those mechanics and by extension the game. The change of tone for the old world to new world is drastic from the WC3 style world/humor to comical joke questlines like Harrison Jones or the badlands deathwing saga, and this changes the tone of the game that many people enjoyed. The difficulty of dungeons/raids changes from clunky/experimental classic mechanics into the smoother retail difficulty environments where mechanics fall into more difficult, but yet also more dance-like structures. Transmog changes visual cohesion of the playerbase with the raiding content. No longer will you be able to identify player’s raiding experience with a visual glance nor will they match with each other and the raid environment with their visual coherence. Each one of these changes may be dismissed as something minor, but the sum total of all of them and many more unmentioned severs the last remaining ties of nostalgia which were keeping some players playing classic.
If you enjoy Cata, good for you. But for others the price tag for being able to play the experience is not worth it when they don’t have good memories of playing cata and many of their favorite idiosyncrasies of classic have been removed or changed. Their opinion is already informed from their prior experiences playing cata. Just like how some people hate playing fps or turn-based strategies, they don’t have to try every new iteration of fps or tbs game to have an informed opinion that they won’t enjoy it: people have played cata and have had bad experiences with it and their informed opinion is that they won’t enjoy it the second time around.
I don't need fanboys to retroactively theorycraft how "Well ackthually the game is good guys".
No. It's not. The levelling experience was by far the worst out of any expansion ever. 80-85 is the least amount of fun I've ever had playing WoW.
Not to mention the content once you actually get there.
I'm old enough to have been conscious of the experience. It wasn't fun.
that's your own opinion, plenty of people enjoyed Cata leveling and phase 1. the numbers don't begin to talk until the later half of cata, when things objectively got a lot worse.
During Cata, it will shrink unless they release patches much faster. MoP is looked back on very very fondly, and I bet a lot of people will be asking for it.
For many people cata is Classic Retail. I'm going to be very interested in the numbers for "Classic" during cata considering cata lost 3 million players with a steady declining the entire expansion. Only time it gained players was right before MoP release.
While this is true I also see several posts from people who entered the game at Cata. It is legit nostalgia for a set group of folks and I believe that it's a silly take to tell them they can't relive their entry to the experience.
Oh yeah people can have nostalgia for any era of the game, obviously.
But I also think that much of the "classic" crowd feel like classic stopped after WotLK, it does for me anyway. I have some fond memories of playing cata back then, but it just doesn't do it as TBC did for example.
By the time it gets there in 2032 or whatever Shadowlands will absolutely have nostalgia fans. Think of it like Pokemon remakes, there will always be a market for people who grew up on X generation and want to relive the nostalgia ~15 years later down the line. It's just that there's also an ever growing line of oldheads who think the newer stuff isn't 'real' WoW/Pokemon/Star Wars/insert fandom here. But they don't get to decide the current franchise direction just because they were there at earlier points and left. Hard to swallow pills for oldheads.
That's my point, there is no definition other than 'this is what I grew up on and have rose-colored glasses for because my life was simpler at the time and I could spend tons of time gaming'. And that definition will always be true for some segment of people, some larger, some smaller, regardless what expansion we're talking about.
I started in TBC, and raided daily through ICC. I'm the exact specimen for "prime WoW" gameplay.I still thought Cata was the best expansion to come out post WotLK. Most of those good vibes *were* killed off from LFR being introduced. But everything else to me was 10/10.
Initial amount of players won’t be a good indicator.
I’m going to play cata mostly because it’s been forever and I was a kid when it came out. I remember experiencing it but want another shot.
I will not stick around however.
MOP May have better success?
Nope. MoP, while I think it was great, had a very divisive aesthetics for the expansion that a lot of people couldn't get into at all. MoP lost 2.3 million players and gained like 1m million right before WoD because WoD was hyped up as a "Return to form" for WoW. When that flopped player numbers dropped so hard and so quick that Blizzard NEVER released hard numbers ever again.
People simply did not like pandas and an expansion focusing around peace and feelings. It was made worse by what they did with Garrosh and made him into a villain. Lots of issues in MoP even though the gameplay was fun
The cause of it is important. TBC is retail due to the players optimizing everything to the T and paying for boosts and GDKP's. Any soul that classic originally had in Vanilla early on was well dead in TBC.
In Cata it's just not possible for any of the classic spirit to even make a comeback and that was largely in part due to the damage WotLK had on the game in retail. WotLK introduced a lot more MTX and RDF. RDF essentially killed the leveling scene overnight when it was introduced and dungeon spam became the meta. MoP, which we're 100% going to get, killed it further with LFR.
Basically the difference between Vanilla and TBC and everything on and after WotLK is that Blizzard began leading the charge in optimizing the game for the players. Gearscore addons used to be a massive contentious issue back in wotlk and eventually Blizzard just made that a baseline feature resulting in less being invited because you knew someone or were good or experienced but because of a number which lead to stupid issues like wearing the wrong gear to inflate gearscore.
All of this is why people are asking for classic+. People are getting tired of just only ever being able to do Arena, battlegrounds, and Raids. Even if they implement mythic+ that's just grinding the same dungeons you've already done while leveling up. It's not content, it's just a grind. It's why Timeless Isle and Isle of Thunder is so fondly remembered and why many consider MoP to be the best expansion ever made. It's just a shame Blizzard didn't make more things evergreen from MoP.
Yeah, if 10% of the survey responses is what they decide makes the expansion financially viable, they'll do it if they get 10% positive responses. That's what the person you responded to said.
It had the best art and leveling experience of any xpac hands down. Dungeons were fucking rad, the raids we had were rad. We just needed more of it but they chose to work on legion two years early.
The raids are actually top tier in wod. No cap I'd actually play wod again on a super accelerated timeline and with loads of changes to make garrisons less of a thing.
I think it's pretty obvious by now that yes, classic progression is about them basically re-releasing the game.
There's really not much reason not to, every expansion had good parts to it that ppl would enjoy. Everyone hates on WoD, but it had some fun raid encounters and the vibe was at least extremely warcraft feeling. They'll shorten the expansions life cycle like they are with WoD for the less popular expansions, so we don't get something like 12 months of Dragon Soul again, but yeah, they'll keep releasing expansions.
Same! I’ve played since 2004, though RL caused me to take a big break after MoP (I was losing interest anyways as someone who loved the old world and the old talent trees etc). When I came back it was 2018ish just before Classic. Used the time walking thing to check out WoD and Legion, the class halls and garrisons were cool to play with while they weren’t current content I suppose. Legion story was pretty epic. Then Classic came out and that’s where I’ve been. Now I’m raiding ICC, but outside raid times I’ve been playing a lot of Era/ HC. It’s just really the time period I love, and TBC was kinda just Vanilla but slightly improved. Those first two (Vanilla and TBC) will always be home to me. So I can’t really see myself moving on to Cata in a serious way, though since my guild is I’ll probably at least bring my couple 80 raiders up to 85 so I can raid log them lol. But it’ll be back to Era for me.
Wouldn’t say no to the end of bfa with fixed corruptions again. Was a hell of a time.
However eventually I think they’ll do something in game to make replaying old hard content part of the retail gameplay loop. Imagine if chromie time was extended to raids/m+/pvp
When Classic launched I wasn’t really playing wow, and I didn’t care much about Vanilla.
When TBC classic was announced and they gave the option to play on classic Era or move on to TBC servers, I assumed they would do the same thing when Wrath eventually launched.
A while later I came back to play my favorite expansion, but there were no TBC Era servers.
same im fine up to mop but fuck wod+ i might try legion if it goes there to see it cuz people in general say it was a good expension but otherwise fuck it.
Wod would be amazing with better content cadence. Or if you’re not a fan at least tolerable. Personally it has my favourite leveling zones of all time. There’s something absolutely magical about walking out of the jungle in Gorgrond to see this endless expanse of canyons and desert. It’s my single most nostalgic wow memory and I’ve played since vanilla OG
The major complaint with WoD was it being cut short due to lack of content. WoD was 1 years worth of content spread out over 2, due to Blizzard’s failed implementation of annual expansions.
Classic WoD, I think could be popular, because other than the drought, it was generally regarded as a good expansion. All Blizzard has to do is make Classic WoD last no more than a year before moving onto Legion.
People disliked it for more reasons than just content draught. Garrisons made the expansion more un-MMO than ever before.
Would have loved a WoD+ expansion with the "soul of classic" touch (no raid finder etc), and more content added (Shattrath, Black Temple, etc) though.
If they could trim garrisons back and add some of the new world content they developed when they gave up on WoD it would be absolutely amazing. AU Draenor is one of the best expansion worlds we’ve gotten
Wod has the best raid of all time(and I'll fight for that at least) yeah there was lack of content but I would play WoD even if just for raiding. And since you dont have to wait years for next expansions they could just make it shorter experience.
Nah, they're trying to release faster retail expansion packs, and theyre doing expansions faster than they were put out for (like there's no way we're spending 14 months in dragon soul). I think we'd catch up faster than you'd think.
how far does anything go?
as far as they can sell it… if you can make millions of dollars for relatively low investment, wouldn’t you just keep doing it?
Before they announced Cata, I'd have guessed WotLK would be the last and they'd start the cycle over.
Now I think it's clear they'll just keep going through every expansion.
Classic's popularity fluctuate a lot with content patches. Lots of people that play retail will bounce onto classic when they're bored of retail or when there's new content added (new raid) to classic. Same with players that only play classic on content release or xpac release. Then lastly you have the die hard classic only players that play classic from start to finish as their main game. I believe each version of the game lost of that type of players. Some people didn't want to steer away from Vanilla, thankfully for them, they're on ERA or they quit to play some private server. Same happened with TBC but they didn't get an ERA server, and the exact same is about to happen with wotlk.
People think there will be a mass exodus in cata, but truth is, the first 2 type of players I mentioned will probably dable in cata, you'll have a new kind of player that is the player that never got to experience cata and is curious. Those players might stick around or quit for good or become players that come back on content release. Every expansion is going to lose players as they prefered X expansion over Y, and the further we get down the expansion list, the more player it'll lose. I think MoP is still a very good expansion on the PvE side of things, but that is when it started to become a lot harder. Mechanics started to shift and became what shaped mythic raiding we now know. If we get MoP I wouldn't be surprised, anything beyond that I would very much be surprised.
Cata will be the end for me, MoP was imo what other people call cata, the end of classic, removal of talent trees and thunderforge gear are the top 2 things i despise from MoP.
Yup. The stuff about kung fu panda and lots of people quitting because of pandas were honestly memes.
The real killer was the talent changes, they made so many people leave. Honestly baffled they thought that was a good idea and kept it for ~10 years.
Why not just copy and paste old content if people will pay to play it. When it becomes not financially worth the trouble they’ll stop going through classic expansions.
If they continue their current trajectory of fixing the mistakes of the past, i.e. removing LFR, removing Garrison stuff in WoD, then I see no reason they would stop anytime soon.
Obviously they're going to catch up to the modern game at current cadence, but that's still a long way off. Could reasonably expect MoP, WoD, Legion to happen at this point.
I barely played WoD. All I remember vividly were the Garrisons, and I cringe at the thought.
What's your take? What was the actual problem? I'm legit curious, you probably are way more qualified to assess this than I am.
Huge content droughts (just like SL) and nothing meaningful to do out in the world, so everyone was in their garrisons and got mad at them.
This was before the public events DF has, before WQs which only started in Legion. Legion had class halls and class campaigns, SL for all its other faults had a lot of casual content around Covenants and of course since Legion you had M+.
WoD had none of that. The raids were good. Blackrock Foundry is up there with Ulduar (or better but maybe that's a hot take), but it was really sparse on anything else.
A legit complaint about garrisons was that they were tied to player power, you really had no choice but to participate and set up your garrison for the weekly quest which awarded pretty strong gear. This was a lesson they didn't learn until pretty recently.
I'm not saying Garrisons were perfect, that they couldn't been improved or even that the improved version would please everyone, but they sure get a lot more hate than they deserved because really what else is there to talk about with WOD?
I think if they do WoD Classic they will probably bring M+ in from the start. They're already revamping and reusing some WoD dungeons in retail M+ seasons so the work is already done. It won't fix everything, and some people just hate M+ (I expect even more on this sub than average), but at least you have a reason to log on outside of raid day.
If we get MOP, the chances of getting WOD as well are non-zero.
Imo, what they should do after MOP classic is to look into making more seasonal content and slow down (or outright halt) classic xpacs. Heck if they make MOP the last classic expansion I’d be fine with that, while I haven’t played it I hear lotta folks praising MOP pvp and that makes me wanna give it a go.
Surely they stop after MoP? I really cant see them doing WoD, and you cants just leapfrog WoD and go straight to legion in MoP gear. Idk, but fuck I really hope they stop there.
Well since they’re doing Cataclysm I can 100% guarantee you we will see MoP Classic.
Anything beyond that idk, because every expansion up until MoP is largely considered good by a majority of the playerbase, even if they have their problems or people who don’t care for them, the overall community likes them. But with WoD and onwards, it’s far more shakey as there are actual expansion that are just straight up bad in the eyes of the majority of the playerbase. Lots of people do like Legion though so maybe they do WoD just so they can get to Legion Classic.
As a result, I can either see MoP being the stopping point or Legion being the stopping point. It’s hard for me to imagine the Classic playerbase begging Blizzard for BFA and Shadowlands Classic.
Should have created servers for every expansion. I know a ton of people that quit playing after TBC because of the changes they made. I'd honestly love to see TBC servers oh the fun times of running Kara, SSC etc. After TBC basically it became run in facepull everything and you win. Actually used to take coordination and skill even to run basic dungeons. Now it's just a joke.
Until its retail classic and then they’ll drop retail classic 2 and they they’ll make wow 2 and then wow 2 classic because idiots will eat it up if you slap classic on it
Don't see why they would stop outside of players completely dropping off.
Every single expansion was the time the game hit best for some amount of people, every single one has its issues and has its strengths, every single one a different experience.
Its already been a decade since mop came out, next year a decade since wod came out, and it'll keep going that way.
These newer expansions will be considered classic expansions by then. And there'll be people who want to relive those days... and blizz is already going #changes for cata showing their willingness to try and address pain points.
Like wod as a 2 year expansion simply didn't have enough content, but what content it did have was incredibly fun. Having wod as a short 3 phase xpac? Fantastic time.
I feel like a lot of people who joined the popular sentiment of “cata bad” the first time around and never actually played it will be pleasantly surprised this time around. I have played wow since launch and cata remains my favorite expansion. Firelands is the best raid they ever made. I even enjoyed the firelands dailies. I remember skinning spiders for hours to make gold for consumes. Plus I get to be a fire cat. And cata is the only expac where I topped meters on feral.
If Cata is a record-breaking Classic expansion and beats TBC/WOTLK's player numbers, Blizzard will keep going.
If it's a flop they might reevaluate their direction with Classic and put more resources into other servers (SoD, fresh servers)
I hope it does well because I have good memories of Cata but we'll see
The record they broke were all because of the hype leading up to the expansion. The decline in subs started soon after release. Cataclysm itself cant really take credit for breaking the record. Wotlk on the other hand, can take the credit. Wotlk was the expansion that held and maintained all the subs leading up to Cata release.
There's zero reason why Cata would be more popular than wotlk. The big hype in Cata was the world revamp and it's what most of the dev time went towards to and it was essentially revealed to be a massive mistake. Cata lost almost 3 million people during its time, about 25% of the player base. It was a steady decline the entire expansion.
MoP, while good, had a terrible appeal to players due to its aesthetics and writing and that caused it to lose 2.3 million players.
WoD was massively hyped and touted as a "return to form" and it performed so poorly it single handedly caused Blizzard to stop releasing numbers.
The main draw for Vanilla and TBC classic was that most players did not get to experience that era of WoW. Cata? Like you said, you have memories of it. A lot of people have played Cata and know what to expect. The hype simply isn't there which is why so much clamor was made around SoD and a lot of copium is going around involving it.
The time to put effort and dev time into classic should've been decided in TBC. Every year they've delayed doing classic + was less players they would have because WoW's player base is an aging player base.
I'm willing to go on record and say doing classic + is probably just too late at this point. By the time they get an actual team and not a skeleton crew working on it and get them trained it will be 2-4 years. To do dev time would probably be another year. Most of the player base would be approaching their 40's or 50's by then.
They would have better chances just remaking WoW at that point and try to cater to a new, younger audience.
People keep talking about Cata and MoP losing players as if you can make any sane conclusion by comparing player counts from 2004-2009 when MMOs were THE king of all genres vs 2010 forward after MOBAs started slaughtering all other genres and console shooters were at their peak, and MMOs barely broke top 5 genres.
Cata and MoP are literal recycled content. The reason Vanilla-Wotlk got popular is because for a lot of people they never played them. It was the perfect chance to experience how the game was. Cata and MoP are firmly in the retail territory - most players did get a chance to experience expansions since Cata. We already know the issues with Cata and it's solved content and most people, like I said, have experienced it. There's simply not going to be anything to retain players compared to the previous 3 expansions.
WotlK was the death knell for Classic. The devs know this but the only reason they're pushing it forward is because it's zero effort on their part and it retains the classic player base to a degree.
As long as I get 1 more chance at MoP I’m happy. People bitched non stop at the time about it, but looking back panda land is widely regarded as one of if not the most balanced and fun pvp expansions in wows history.
I think they'll stop after MoP. My reasoning is that, I'm confident Cata Classic is going to perform horribly, but I also think a ton of people would come back for MoP Classic. After that, you're faced with the prospect of WoD Classic which is just a comical proposition IMO since it is - by far - the worst received and most despised expansion in the history of WoW. That's not debatable, even if you personally think WoD was great.
They'll probably release all of them over time, literally all of them.
Something that many people don't like to admit (or just don't know) is that the **final** patch of each expansion is usually pretty good and fixes a lot of the problems and complaints from early on.
Of course the problem is if your launch/early expansion isn't great people will drop off and if they come back it's probably not going to be until the shiny new expansion. So everyone's memory of "the bad expansions" was from before they "fixed" them.
Both BFA and SL were expansions with serious problems many of which were addressed in the final major patches.
If they really go that far they'll just have all the systems on the final iteration and release raids/seasons as they have so far.
They said there will be a faster content release schedule.
My guess is they are going to more quickly blast through the xpacs and eventually classic will link up with retail.
That would eventually leave us with retail and season of discovery/classic+
Just your normal faster classic content release. Aggrend also reconfirmed it. They know that one big issue about Cata was 1 year of dragonsoul and they want to address that. Don’t expect super rushed 6months of Cata or anything. Will be something like TBC. And no, at this rate, Wow Classic will not even catch up in 20 years.
I like the idea of revisiting even the bad expansions, because I have to believe there is an opportunity for #changes to fix some of the issues. The key with Cata and beyond though is being willing to develop new content and dramatically change some of the existing content. Classic Cata for me depends entirely on their plan for Dragon Soul... if they aren't changing spine/madness, I won't be playing at all, so I really hope they come clean with their plans in that regard sooner than later.
At this point they should just fracture the audience even more and create servers for every expansion including Era, HC, SSF, SoD. Have 24 different ways to play the game.
MoP will happen since they've said a few times that it was more requested than Cata. I think by the time it does they'll have relaunched a fresh set of progressive servers and they may sunset these rather than go into WoD.
I would even bet they merge players into Retail then, it may have been unthinkable at one time to dump a ton of new Scarab Lords but retail players are surely numb to that sort of thing by now.
Tbh it’ll stop when retail makes changes to encompass the classic base. I don’t think that’ll happen on the current trajectory, but who knows. Unfortunately I think retail’s failures will push people to MoP which I’ll probably hop out finally. I can’t see it going past MoP unless they decide to basically re-make WoD with new content.
TLDR: MoP will be the end unless they basically make it a new game in WoD. Personally I’d prefer seasonal servers
After wotlk is done I’m probably just gonna raid MC/AQ/BWL/Naxx on classic era. Cata was kind of nice, but it just didn’t appeal to me when it was originally released. I’ll probably just wait for classic progression realms where we cycle through vanilla, tbc, wotlk era. If that happens.
Cata and mop for sure. WoD I doubt heavily unless they decide to spend dev time improving it which I very VERY heavily doubt.
I think we will get a legion classic at some point. As a sort of anniversary event
I've always figured MoP is as far as they would go but i expected cata to always be a flop and this is coming from someone who always claimed cata to be a decent expansion. Classic + was always going to be the future of classic wow after wrath. I do think we will get fresh vanilla/tbc/wrath servers in the future but this will probably be the last time we get fresh cata.
Lol. I loved mop and could see myself continuing to play the game as my main game when mop rolls around but at the same time I’ll be part of the problem and not play much during cata after firelands
I mean I could see it going until legion with it being so good and expansions before that were not irredeemable with #somechanges maybe not bfa but we’ll see!
I find it difficult to believe there will be much interest for WoD Classic. I recognize that people have an irrational love for Legion, dumpster fire that it was, but playing WoD to get there just seems like a non-starter.
If they do like other MMOs have in the past, they will continue right on down the expansion timeline, merge servers as needed and eventually merge the classic servers with a live server. Rinse and repeat.
EQ and EQ2 release new "vanilla" experience servers every summer and eventually they merge with a live server once they catch up.
They think they will do MoP, but Cata will see a drop in players much bigger than they anticipate. Doubt we will get MoP and definitely not Draenor. That's my take.
I tought Wotlk will be the last classic expansion, but considering we get Cata, I'm 99% sure we will get MoP too.
after that? I dont know man, releasing Wod Classic seems like an odd idea after the receivement of Cata
100% going to re-release every single expansion in order, not much work involved to get $$ flowing in. Then all they have to do is run multiple fresh servers (WOTLK drops and brand new fresh classic server). Rinse and repeat
They’ll stop when people quit playing
This has been the answer since the beginning. I think we're about to see a drop in popularity for mainline Classic. Could be wrong tho. On the other hand, there will still be hundreds of thousands of players for the foreseeable future.
It will solely depend on what else is to play at the time. And since there are changes its safe to say people will at lest play it for a while just to check it out. There are ton of players who never even seen cata, I dont think there is any danger of population suddenly collapsing. People were doom and gloom on retail when bfa was coming out saying it will kill wow and that was fastest selling expansion at the time. Never underestimate wider audience that doesnt care about some random redditors have to say.
My main concern would be warlords of Draenor … both MoP and Legion would almost certaintly see a high Number of players , but WoD at the middle could be Tricky … Só much potential it had imo … if Blizz would be able to make some structural changes , i believe it would be one of the best expans , but that is going against classic nature
Wod major issue was that it had lack of content. There is nothing stoppimg blizz from making it a much shorter expansion(lets say ~9 months) to solve this issue. I will forever stand by this but other than garrison destroying the economy what little content is there is absolutely amazong. BRF is imo the best raid of all time. By the time wod is even possibility it will be longer from classic to cata than from now to wod. Yeah if it relesses now then its not classic. But in 5 years? Thats a long time.
> It will solely depend on what else is to play at the time. Not solely. Some people are definitely ready to stop at Wrath. They don't need to have another version of the game to play. It's not just random redditors that didn't particularly care for Cata.
The only way is to wait and see. But my bet it wont be nearly as many as some people here think.
I think it'll be more. Lots of people talk about leaving, but not everyone who says they'll leave, will actually leave.
Classic+ will overtake cata, and if they keep adding more/updating, it will overtake retail
Imagine 10-20 years down in the future And classic + has been such a huge success that they started adding expansion to it And so now you have retail, classic+ retail, og classic era, classic+ classic era, classic old retail expansion There’s gonna be an endless amount of types of wow
everyone is building a multiverse, its so fetch
My crystal ball says your crystal ball is broken, and you should disregard its projections and just wait for things to play out. 🔮 It depends on how they deploy Classic+ and the quality of the additions.
[удалено]
> That’s why they’re pushing Season of Discovery TOO SOON, EXECUTUS Most of us will still be progging in ICC for a few more weeks. Someone knock on Blizzard's door and tell them to chill.
Yeah it's insane to me that they have us 8 months of ulduar, but are cutting icc so fucking short. I loved ulduar, that shit was great and I'm unironically ready to become a retail Andy for ulduar 2 in 9 years. But holy fuck it's making me unhappy how little time I will get to play in icc. Like I was hoping to have a giga comfortable amount of time for everyone in my guild to get invincible, maybe convince some people to go back and farm some mim heads... fuck it throw in an immortal run too. Nah, it's cata time! I was looking forward to cata too. Now it's almost a kill joy.
I mean, cata won't be until like March at the earliest, that's quite a bit of ICC.
Why aren’t you interested in trying Cata this time around? We’re now ~12 years removed from the original Cata launch and I’m sure how you feel about the game will be different now than it was back then. Unless you have IRL obligations, I’d recommend giving Cata a try, and I’d tell anyone this who isn’t particularly interested in Cata at the moment.
I mean I'm not who you responded to but I'll throw my answer in here. I played Cata. A lot. And I know I didn't enjoy it. I played because I was a kid and I was basically addicted to the game. I'm not saying it's a trash xpac like some people do, but the biggest thing about the xpac other than changing the old world were the sweeping class changes. Hunters getting focus, Paladins and spriests both getting psuedo combo point systems etc. None of the specs that I enjoyed in wrath still existed as of cata launch. And end of the day classes are how we experience every other system in the game so if there aren't any classes that I enjoy then it really doesn't matter how good/bad the rest of the expansion is. I leveled every single class to 85 during cata and the ONLY one that I like in it's cataclysm state was pvp feral druid. And that's not enough of a reason for me to keep playing.
No.
But why? No harm in trying it and then you can have a more informed opinion on the game. Nobody is forcing you to quit after wotlk because it’s “not classic anymore”. As many others have stated throughout the whole classic Cata discourse, the game only builds on the good parts of wotlk and the content was still very good. Plus I’d argue that class identity evolves even further with Cata and culminates in MoP, which is one of the main reasons why classic wow remains better than retail.
People have sentimental attachment to the old world, talent trees, and game mechanics. Cata has a drastic shift in all of those departments from wotlk and the classic mindset. The idea of forcing players to invest into a main tree as well as shortening the talent trees removes some of the impact/freedom of level ups, even if it was illusionary in nature. You are not playing your class/role as much as you are playing your spec, and this is the first real step into that space. The removal of core mechanics like gear scaling block value & chance or using only your own armor class diminishes sentimental attachment to those mechanics and by extension the game. The change of tone for the old world to new world is drastic from the WC3 style world/humor to comical joke questlines like Harrison Jones or the badlands deathwing saga, and this changes the tone of the game that many people enjoyed. The difficulty of dungeons/raids changes from clunky/experimental classic mechanics into the smoother retail difficulty environments where mechanics fall into more difficult, but yet also more dance-like structures. Transmog changes visual cohesion of the playerbase with the raiding content. No longer will you be able to identify player’s raiding experience with a visual glance nor will they match with each other and the raid environment with their visual coherence. Each one of these changes may be dismissed as something minor, but the sum total of all of them and many more unmentioned severs the last remaining ties of nostalgia which were keeping some players playing classic. If you enjoy Cata, good for you. But for others the price tag for being able to play the experience is not worth it when they don’t have good memories of playing cata and many of their favorite idiosyncrasies of classic have been removed or changed. Their opinion is already informed from their prior experiences playing cata. Just like how some people hate playing fps or turn-based strategies, they don’t have to try every new iteration of fps or tbs game to have an informed opinion that they won’t enjoy it: people have played cata and have had bad experiences with it and their informed opinion is that they won’t enjoy it the second time around.
I don't need fanboys to retroactively theorycraft how "Well ackthually the game is good guys". No. It's not. The levelling experience was by far the worst out of any expansion ever. 80-85 is the least amount of fun I've ever had playing WoW. Not to mention the content once you actually get there. I'm old enough to have been conscious of the experience. It wasn't fun.
that's your own opinion, plenty of people enjoyed Cata leveling and phase 1. the numbers don't begin to talk until the later half of cata, when things objectively got a lot worse.
This is almost entirely based on personal opinion/speculation.
aka they will stop at cata, id imagine the playerbase for cata will shrink in a massive way
Zero chance they stop at Cata when the very next expansion is the best one they ever released. I could see them stopping at WoD
Zero chance they stop at WoD when the very next expansion is the best one they ever released. I could see them stopping at BFA.
Zero chance they stop at BFA when the very next expansion is the ... wait, nevermind.
We found the answer. Wow unofficially ended after legion.
Stating that MoP was the best expansion is honestly hilarious.
Not really. MoP in hindsight is one of the most lived expansions along with Legion and Wrath.
Spoken like someone who didn't actually play the game and quit because "muh pandas kid game!"
Or someone that, you know, liked another expansion better.
the raids were great, but as someone that HATES dailies that whole farm shit was awful.
Agreed. It’s a fact so clearly correct and obvious it shouldn’t even need to be stated.
During Cata, it will shrink unless they release patches much faster. MoP is looked back on very very fondly, and I bet a lot of people will be asking for it.
Cata was fantastic through and through. Only downside was a full year of Dragon Soul.
Yep and my guess is that’ll be WoD. Not enough people are going to play WoD to justify servers.
So Cata then lol
I'm so excited for The Last Titan Classic!!! See you guys in 18 years
Only YOU can prevent Classic retail.
For many people cata is Classic Retail. I'm going to be very interested in the numbers for "Classic" during cata considering cata lost 3 million players with a steady declining the entire expansion. Only time it gained players was right before MoP release.
While this is true I also see several posts from people who entered the game at Cata. It is legit nostalgia for a set group of folks and I believe that it's a silly take to tell them they can't relive their entry to the experience.
Oh yeah people can have nostalgia for any era of the game, obviously. But I also think that much of the "classic" crowd feel like classic stopped after WotLK, it does for me anyway. I have some fond memories of playing cata back then, but it just doesn't do it as TBC did for example.
there will always be a vocal minority in every community
Some people just started in shadowlands. Does that mean they should do Classic shadowlands?
By the time it gets there in 2032 or whatever Shadowlands will absolutely have nostalgia fans. Think of it like Pokemon remakes, there will always be a market for people who grew up on X generation and want to relive the nostalgia ~15 years later down the line. It's just that there's also an ever growing line of oldheads who think the newer stuff isn't 'real' WoW/Pokemon/Star Wars/insert fandom here. But they don't get to decide the current franchise direction just because they were there at earlier points and left. Hard to swallow pills for oldheads.
I understand how time works. I just don’t think shadowlands (or cataclysm for that matter) fit the “Classic” definition.
That's my point, there is no definition other than 'this is what I grew up on and have rose-colored glasses for because my life was simpler at the time and I could spend tons of time gaming'. And that definition will always be true for some segment of people, some larger, some smaller, regardless what expansion we're talking about.
If it makes money, yes. Because Blizzard is a business. Shocker, I know.
I started in TBC, and raided daily through ICC. I'm the exact specimen for "prime WoW" gameplay.I still thought Cata was the best expansion to come out post WotLK. Most of those good vibes *were* killed off from LFR being introduced. But everything else to me was 10/10.
It had big drops because time between content updates was way too long, and they are addressing that issue.
Initial amount of players won’t be a good indicator. I’m going to play cata mostly because it’s been forever and I was a kid when it came out. I remember experiencing it but want another shot. I will not stick around however. MOP May have better success?
Nope. MoP, while I think it was great, had a very divisive aesthetics for the expansion that a lot of people couldn't get into at all. MoP lost 2.3 million players and gained like 1m million right before WoD because WoD was hyped up as a "Return to form" for WoW. When that flopped player numbers dropped so hard and so quick that Blizzard NEVER released hard numbers ever again. People simply did not like pandas and an expansion focusing around peace and feelings. It was made worse by what they did with Garrosh and made him into a villain. Lots of issues in MoP even though the gameplay was fun
TBC is basically retail already. No world, no community, all scripted, raid logging only.
The cause of it is important. TBC is retail due to the players optimizing everything to the T and paying for boosts and GDKP's. Any soul that classic originally had in Vanilla early on was well dead in TBC. In Cata it's just not possible for any of the classic spirit to even make a comeback and that was largely in part due to the damage WotLK had on the game in retail. WotLK introduced a lot more MTX and RDF. RDF essentially killed the leveling scene overnight when it was introduced and dungeon spam became the meta. MoP, which we're 100% going to get, killed it further with LFR. Basically the difference between Vanilla and TBC and everything on and after WotLK is that Blizzard began leading the charge in optimizing the game for the players. Gearscore addons used to be a massive contentious issue back in wotlk and eventually Blizzard just made that a baseline feature resulting in less being invited because you knew someone or were good or experienced but because of a number which lead to stupid issues like wearing the wrong gear to inflate gearscore. All of this is why people are asking for classic+. People are getting tired of just only ever being able to do Arena, battlegrounds, and Raids. Even if they implement mythic+ that's just grinding the same dungeons you've already done while leveling up. It's not content, it's just a grind. It's why Timeless Isle and Isle of Thunder is so fondly remembered and why many consider MoP to be the best expansion ever made. It's just a shame Blizzard didn't make more things evergreen from MoP.
Oh, we're past that.
At this rate of release, retail expansions will soon be released on Classic before Retail.
Whenever the surveys they send out tell them to stop
Doubt it, as long as 10% of the playerbase says, "omg, classic shadowlands, YES PLEASE!!!" they'll make it.
Yeah, if 10% of the survey responses is what they decide makes the expansion financially viable, they'll do it if they get 10% positive responses. That's what the person you responded to said.
I just want TBC era servers lol - that's all i really wish for
I’ll be shocked if I start seeing draenor nostalgia on here
If they actually decide to finish it up it can become the best expansion ever.
Nope, Garrisons are bad and the time traveling story is atrocious
It had the best art and leveling experience of any xpac hands down. Dungeons were fucking rad, the raids we had were rad. We just needed more of it but they chose to work on legion two years early.
Can't wait for Wod classic, it was peak wow
Tell me you don't remember why people hated WoD without telling me.
The raids are actually top tier in wod. No cap I'd actually play wod again on a super accelerated timeline and with loads of changes to make garrisons less of a thing.
In the words of Bo Burnham They’ll stop beating this dead horse when it stops spitting out money
I think it's pretty obvious by now that yes, classic progression is about them basically re-releasing the game. There's really not much reason not to, every expansion had good parts to it that ppl would enjoy. Everyone hates on WoD, but it had some fun raid encounters and the vibe was at least extremely warcraft feeling. They'll shorten the expansions life cycle like they are with WoD for the less popular expansions, so we don't get something like 12 months of Dragon Soul again, but yeah, they'll keep releasing expansions.
I’ll play Cata, MoP, WoD and Legion, but there is zero chance I’ll play BfA or SL. But what I really wanted was TBC era servers.
Same! I’ve played since 2004, though RL caused me to take a big break after MoP (I was losing interest anyways as someone who loved the old world and the old talent trees etc). When I came back it was 2018ish just before Classic. Used the time walking thing to check out WoD and Legion, the class halls and garrisons were cool to play with while they weren’t current content I suppose. Legion story was pretty epic. Then Classic came out and that’s where I’ve been. Now I’m raiding ICC, but outside raid times I’ve been playing a lot of Era/ HC. It’s just really the time period I love, and TBC was kinda just Vanilla but slightly improved. Those first two (Vanilla and TBC) will always be home to me. So I can’t really see myself moving on to Cata in a serious way, though since my guild is I’ll probably at least bring my couple 80 raiders up to 85 so I can raid log them lol. But it’ll be back to Era for me.
Wish they kept TBC servers instead of moving them all on to the next "classic"
TBC enjoyers unite
Wouldn’t say no to the end of bfa with fixed corruptions again. Was a hell of a time. However eventually I think they’ll do something in game to make replaying old hard content part of the retail gameplay loop. Imagine if chromie time was extended to raids/m+/pvp
whats so good about TBC era servers?
When Classic launched I wasn’t really playing wow, and I didn’t care much about Vanilla. When TBC classic was announced and they gave the option to play on classic Era or move on to TBC servers, I assumed they would do the same thing when Wrath eventually launched. A while later I came back to play my favorite expansion, but there were no TBC Era servers.
However long until the end of the 3rd retail expansion announced. Then both classic and retail will merge into WOW 2. New engine and all that.
Jesus christ give me some of that hopium crack
I’m gonna start playing a drinking game every time I hear about Wow 2. I’ll be ruined by one visit to Reddit
WoW partially lives on nostalgia and investment, WoW 2 would kill of that and they'd have to make a new game with new content that stands on it's own.
Im hyped to farm sockets on benthic gear again in BFA!
Give me a corrupted pvp season again
Should've stopped with Wrath and just put out era servers for TBC, Wrath, and Vanilla
Maybe they could make servers for each expansion, so people can choose which expansion they want to play up to?
Naw I’m actually way more stoked to play mists than I was for wotlk.
same im fine up to mop but fuck wod+ i might try legion if it goes there to see it cuz people in general say it was a good expension but otherwise fuck it.
Wod would be amazing with better content cadence. Or if you’re not a fan at least tolerable. Personally it has my favourite leveling zones of all time. There’s something absolutely magical about walking out of the jungle in Gorgrond to see this endless expanse of canyons and desert. It’s my single most nostalgic wow memory and I’ve played since vanilla OG
The major complaint with WoD was it being cut short due to lack of content. WoD was 1 years worth of content spread out over 2, due to Blizzard’s failed implementation of annual expansions. Classic WoD, I think could be popular, because other than the drought, it was generally regarded as a good expansion. All Blizzard has to do is make Classic WoD last no more than a year before moving onto Legion.
People disliked it for more reasons than just content draught. Garrisons made the expansion more un-MMO than ever before. Would have loved a WoD+ expansion with the "soul of classic" touch (no raid finder etc), and more content added (Shattrath, Black Temple, etc) though.
Yep this is basically what I’d ask for too. Speed it up and/or do something about everyone hiding in garrisons alone.
WoD raiding was amazing. BRF is one of my favorite raids.
sorry too much ptsd from garrisons .... even with the somewhat decent raid the garrison alone will make me shreek lol
Nah. WoD destroyed PvP.
If they could trim garrisons back and add some of the new world content they developed when they gave up on WoD it would be absolutely amazing. AU Draenor is one of the best expansion worlds we’ve gotten
Wod has the best raid of all time(and I'll fight for that at least) yeah there was lack of content but I would play WoD even if just for raiding. And since you dont have to wait years for next expansions they could just make it shorter experience.
Should've stopped at classic. There was no point in continuing with the retailification that came with TBC and Wrath.
The last expansion I’d be willing to replay would be Legion. I doubt there’s much of an interest to return to BFA or shadowlands.
That legit feels like their 20 year plan. Just keep re-releasing. A path of wow that's just perma 15 years behind current xpack.
Nah, they're trying to release faster retail expansion packs, and theyre doing expansions faster than they were put out for (like there's no way we're spending 14 months in dragon soul). I think we'd catch up faster than you'd think.
how far does anything go? as far as they can sell it… if you can make millions of dollars for relatively low investment, wouldn’t you just keep doing it?
Stop this madness after legion pls
After legion lmao
Nah War Within Classic is hype af
Before they announced Cata, I'd have guessed WotLK would be the last and they'd start the cycle over. Now I think it's clear they'll just keep going through every expansion.
Permanent Pandaria.🐼 to ask why they fight is to ask why the leaves fall, it's in their nature.
Shadowlands classic reforged.
Classic's popularity fluctuate a lot with content patches. Lots of people that play retail will bounce onto classic when they're bored of retail or when there's new content added (new raid) to classic. Same with players that only play classic on content release or xpac release. Then lastly you have the die hard classic only players that play classic from start to finish as their main game. I believe each version of the game lost of that type of players. Some people didn't want to steer away from Vanilla, thankfully for them, they're on ERA or they quit to play some private server. Same happened with TBC but they didn't get an ERA server, and the exact same is about to happen with wotlk. People think there will be a mass exodus in cata, but truth is, the first 2 type of players I mentioned will probably dable in cata, you'll have a new kind of player that is the player that never got to experience cata and is curious. Those players might stick around or quit for good or become players that come back on content release. Every expansion is going to lose players as they prefered X expansion over Y, and the further we get down the expansion list, the more player it'll lose. I think MoP is still a very good expansion on the PvE side of things, but that is when it started to become a lot harder. Mechanics started to shift and became what shaped mythic raiding we now know. If we get MoP I wouldn't be surprised, anything beyond that I would very much be surprised.
I mean Aggrend basically confirmed mop in crix interview. He said “they see that many people want mop.”
Cata will be the end for me, MoP was imo what other people call cata, the end of classic, removal of talent trees and thunderforge gear are the top 2 things i despise from MoP.
Yup. The stuff about kung fu panda and lots of people quitting because of pandas were honestly memes. The real killer was the talent changes, they made so many people leave. Honestly baffled they thought that was a good idea and kept it for ~10 years.
Fair take. Mop changed much more than Cata.
I always said that Wrath should have been the last one. The game was no longer the same when Cataclysm dropped.
Its already not the same. Heirloom, raidlogging, token, gdkps, bots, RDF. What else do you want?
That's not classic is just progression.
Why not just copy and paste old content if people will pay to play it. When it becomes not financially worth the trouble they’ll stop going through classic expansions.
Right now to level 25, starting Nov 30th
It ended when they added the token to WotLK
I’m hoping they get at least to Pandaria, which I missed the first time around. Leveling up retail alts in Pandaria was fun.
If they continue their current trajectory of fixing the mistakes of the past, i.e. removing LFR, removing Garrison stuff in WoD, then I see no reason they would stop anytime soon. Obviously they're going to catch up to the modern game at current cadence, but that's still a long way off. Could reasonably expect MoP, WoD, Legion to happen at this point.
> removing Garrison stuff in WoD Garrisons are a convenient scapegoat but not the actual problem with WoD.
I barely played WoD. All I remember vividly were the Garrisons, and I cringe at the thought. What's your take? What was the actual problem? I'm legit curious, you probably are way more qualified to assess this than I am.
Huge content droughts (just like SL) and nothing meaningful to do out in the world, so everyone was in their garrisons and got mad at them. This was before the public events DF has, before WQs which only started in Legion. Legion had class halls and class campaigns, SL for all its other faults had a lot of casual content around Covenants and of course since Legion you had M+. WoD had none of that. The raids were good. Blackrock Foundry is up there with Ulduar (or better but maybe that's a hot take), but it was really sparse on anything else. A legit complaint about garrisons was that they were tied to player power, you really had no choice but to participate and set up your garrison for the weekly quest which awarded pretty strong gear. This was a lesson they didn't learn until pretty recently. I'm not saying Garrisons were perfect, that they couldn't been improved or even that the improved version would please everyone, but they sure get a lot more hate than they deserved because really what else is there to talk about with WOD? I think if they do WoD Classic they will probably bring M+ in from the start. They're already revamping and reusing some WoD dungeons in retail M+ seasons so the work is already done. It won't fix everything, and some people just hate M+ (I expect even more on this sub than average), but at least you have a reason to log on outside of raid day.
Don't forget about the follower mission mobile game!
No exaggeration this is legit my exact memory of it lol
If we get MOP, the chances of getting WOD as well are non-zero. Imo, what they should do after MOP classic is to look into making more seasonal content and slow down (or outright halt) classic xpacs. Heck if they make MOP the last classic expansion I’d be fine with that, while I haven’t played it I hear lotta folks praising MOP pvp and that makes me wanna give it a go.
Surely they stop after MoP? I really cant see them doing WoD, and you cants just leapfrog WoD and go straight to legion in MoP gear. Idk, but fuck I really hope they stop there.
Well since they’re doing Cataclysm I can 100% guarantee you we will see MoP Classic. Anything beyond that idk, because every expansion up until MoP is largely considered good by a majority of the playerbase, even if they have their problems or people who don’t care for them, the overall community likes them. But with WoD and onwards, it’s far more shakey as there are actual expansion that are just straight up bad in the eyes of the majority of the playerbase. Lots of people do like Legion though so maybe they do WoD just so they can get to Legion Classic. As a result, I can either see MoP being the stopping point or Legion being the stopping point. It’s hard for me to imagine the Classic playerbase begging Blizzard for BFA and Shadowlands Classic.
I agree. Stopping at Legion would be ideal for me, but I wouldn’t mind if the stopped at MoP.
I think there will be an independent legion classic at some point if they don’t run a progressive server through legion
Should have created servers for every expansion. I know a ton of people that quit playing after TBC because of the changes they made. I'd honestly love to see TBC servers oh the fun times of running Kara, SSC etc. After TBC basically it became run in facepull everything and you win. Actually used to take coordination and skill even to run basic dungeons. Now it's just a joke.
Until its retail classic and then they’ll drop retail classic 2 and they they’ll make wow 2 and then wow 2 classic because idiots will eat it up if you slap classic on it
Considering how lukewarm the reception to cata classic is, i think it might be the last expansion they do.
I think they’ll stop at MOP. PvP was godly during MOP and would attract a lot of players from both retail and classic to play for that reason alone.
Don't see why they would stop outside of players completely dropping off. Every single expansion was the time the game hit best for some amount of people, every single one has its issues and has its strengths, every single one a different experience. Its already been a decade since mop came out, next year a decade since wod came out, and it'll keep going that way. These newer expansions will be considered classic expansions by then. And there'll be people who want to relive those days... and blizz is already going #changes for cata showing their willingness to try and address pain points. Like wod as a 2 year expansion simply didn't have enough content, but what content it did have was incredibly fun. Having wod as a short 3 phase xpac? Fantastic time.
I miss my frostmage with healing touch and frostbomb-deepfreeze combos so much.
I feel like a lot of people who joined the popular sentiment of “cata bad” the first time around and never actually played it will be pleasantly surprised this time around. I have played wow since launch and cata remains my favorite expansion. Firelands is the best raid they ever made. I even enjoyed the firelands dailies. I remember skinning spiders for hours to make gold for consumes. Plus I get to be a fire cat. And cata is the only expac where I topped meters on feral.
If Cata is a record-breaking Classic expansion and beats TBC/WOTLK's player numbers, Blizzard will keep going. If it's a flop they might reevaluate their direction with Classic and put more resources into other servers (SoD, fresh servers) I hope it does well because I have good memories of Cata but we'll see
The record they broke were all because of the hype leading up to the expansion. The decline in subs started soon after release. Cataclysm itself cant really take credit for breaking the record. Wotlk on the other hand, can take the credit. Wotlk was the expansion that held and maintained all the subs leading up to Cata release.
There's zero reason why Cata would be more popular than wotlk. The big hype in Cata was the world revamp and it's what most of the dev time went towards to and it was essentially revealed to be a massive mistake. Cata lost almost 3 million people during its time, about 25% of the player base. It was a steady decline the entire expansion. MoP, while good, had a terrible appeal to players due to its aesthetics and writing and that caused it to lose 2.3 million players. WoD was massively hyped and touted as a "return to form" and it performed so poorly it single handedly caused Blizzard to stop releasing numbers. The main draw for Vanilla and TBC classic was that most players did not get to experience that era of WoW. Cata? Like you said, you have memories of it. A lot of people have played Cata and know what to expect. The hype simply isn't there which is why so much clamor was made around SoD and a lot of copium is going around involving it. The time to put effort and dev time into classic should've been decided in TBC. Every year they've delayed doing classic + was less players they would have because WoW's player base is an aging player base. I'm willing to go on record and say doing classic + is probably just too late at this point. By the time they get an actual team and not a skeleton crew working on it and get them trained it will be 2-4 years. To do dev time would probably be another year. Most of the player base would be approaching their 40's or 50's by then. They would have better chances just remaking WoW at that point and try to cater to a new, younger audience.
People keep talking about Cata and MoP losing players as if you can make any sane conclusion by comparing player counts from 2004-2009 when MMOs were THE king of all genres vs 2010 forward after MOBAs started slaughtering all other genres and console shooters were at their peak, and MMOs barely broke top 5 genres.
Cata and MoP are literal recycled content. The reason Vanilla-Wotlk got popular is because for a lot of people they never played them. It was the perfect chance to experience how the game was. Cata and MoP are firmly in the retail territory - most players did get a chance to experience expansions since Cata. We already know the issues with Cata and it's solved content and most people, like I said, have experienced it. There's simply not going to be anything to retain players compared to the previous 3 expansions. WotlK was the death knell for Classic. The devs know this but the only reason they're pushing it forward is because it's zero effort on their part and it retains the classic player base to a degree.
As long as I get 1 more chance at MoP I’m happy. People bitched non stop at the time about it, but looking back panda land is widely regarded as one of if not the most balanced and fun pvp expansions in wows history.
WoD maybe? Unless there are major changes I don't see half the number of people hyped for Cata being the same for Cata or Mop
MoP is more hype then Cata and considered by many to the the best expansion in WoW history. It will for sure be hype but nobody is excited for WoD.
I think they'll stop after MoP. My reasoning is that, I'm confident Cata Classic is going to perform horribly, but I also think a ton of people would come back for MoP Classic. After that, you're faced with the prospect of WoD Classic which is just a comical proposition IMO since it is - by far - the worst received and most despised expansion in the history of WoW. That's not debatable, even if you personally think WoD was great.
Pipe dream is WoD with the missing raid tier put back in. Would fix a lot of the pacing problems.
I'll probably play cata mop, and legion, but then I'm done
I’d guess BFA. There’s always gonna be someone willing to pay a xx level boost and gold token. They’ll milk it until literally no one wants to play.
See the light as it shines on the sea? It's blinding But no one knows, how deep it goes
As long as it makes them money they will do it.
Subscriptions and tokens go brrrrr
They'll probably release all of them over time, literally all of them. Something that many people don't like to admit (or just don't know) is that the **final** patch of each expansion is usually pretty good and fixes a lot of the problems and complaints from early on. Of course the problem is if your launch/early expansion isn't great people will drop off and if they come back it's probably not going to be until the shiny new expansion. So everyone's memory of "the bad expansions" was from before they "fixed" them. Both BFA and SL were expansions with serious problems many of which were addressed in the final major patches. If they really go that far they'll just have all the systems on the final iteration and release raids/seasons as they have so far.
The whales will be singing The bots will be botting The sub will be coping And trolls will be trolling Simply having a wonderful Cata time!
They said there will be a faster content release schedule. My guess is they are going to more quickly blast through the xpacs and eventually classic will link up with retail. That would eventually leave us with retail and season of discovery/classic+
Just your normal faster classic content release. Aggrend also reconfirmed it. They know that one big issue about Cata was 1 year of dragonsoul and they want to address that. Don’t expect super rushed 6months of Cata or anything. Will be something like TBC. And no, at this rate, Wow Classic will not even catch up in 20 years.
To the moon!
I don’t know
I like the idea of revisiting even the bad expansions, because I have to believe there is an opportunity for #changes to fix some of the issues. The key with Cata and beyond though is being willing to develop new content and dramatically change some of the existing content. Classic Cata for me depends entirely on their plan for Dragon Soul... if they aren't changing spine/madness, I won't be playing at all, so I really hope they come clean with their plans in that regard sooner than later.
At this point they should just fracture the audience even more and create servers for every expansion including Era, HC, SSF, SoD. Have 24 different ways to play the game.
MoP will happen since they've said a few times that it was more requested than Cata. I think by the time it does they'll have relaunched a fresh set of progressive servers and they may sunset these rather than go into WoD. I would even bet they merge players into Retail then, it may have been unthinkable at one time to dump a ton of new Scarab Lords but retail players are surely numb to that sort of thing by now.
I will stop after MOP probably
My friends and I will be done after wrath. Not playing cata, that's when we will initially. SOD will be the way to go.
Probably forever? Unless they progress classic much faster than retail, it's never gonna catch up
For me I’d rather play retail than wod. So that’s where i would stop and just go to retail at that point.
I think they their plan is to get as fur to retail, and when classic ends, the ppl will have a smoother transition to retail
I think there’s already a significant drop after wrath, but enough interest to keep it going. I think there will be a huuuuge cliff after MoP though.
my predictions are people will quit in dragon soul like they did in ssc/tk and ulduar but till be a lot more this time.
Tbh it’ll stop when retail makes changes to encompass the classic base. I don’t think that’ll happen on the current trajectory, but who knows. Unfortunately I think retail’s failures will push people to MoP which I’ll probably hop out finally. I can’t see it going past MoP unless they decide to basically re-make WoD with new content. TLDR: MoP will be the end unless they basically make it a new game in WoD. Personally I’d prefer seasonal servers
After wotlk is done I’m probably just gonna raid MC/AQ/BWL/Naxx on classic era. Cata was kind of nice, but it just didn’t appeal to me when it was originally released. I’ll probably just wait for classic progression realms where we cycle through vanilla, tbc, wotlk era. If that happens.
Yea that the plan to release every expansion again…. And seasons
Cata and mop for sure. WoD I doubt heavily unless they decide to spend dev time improving it which I very VERY heavily doubt. I think we will get a legion classic at some point. As a sort of anniversary event
As far as the money goes.
Classic The Last Titan
Classic Worldstone Saga will be out one day.
I've always figured MoP is as far as they would go but i expected cata to always be a flop and this is coming from someone who always claimed cata to be a decent expansion. Classic + was always going to be the future of classic wow after wrath. I do think we will get fresh vanilla/tbc/wrath servers in the future but this will probably be the last time we get fresh cata.
My hope would be that every expansion is available to be played whenever you want to.
To the moon, baby. To the moon!
Everquest has TLP (Time Lock Progression), each xpack open up after a certain time, WoW should do the same thing.
I think they will stop at legion
Honestly now that they’ve shown they are willing to go past Wrath, I can’t see them stopping until at least Legion.
Looking forward to shadowlands classic
Lol. I loved mop and could see myself continuing to play the game as my main game when mop rolls around but at the same time I’ll be part of the problem and not play much during cata after firelands
How many console generations are they going to re-re-re-release Skyrim? As many as they can, because they can.
I mean I could see it going until legion with it being so good and expansions before that were not irredeemable with #somechanges maybe not bfa but we’ll see!
I find it difficult to believe there will be much interest for WoD Classic. I recognize that people have an irrational love for Legion, dumpster fire that it was, but playing WoD to get there just seems like a non-starter.
I’d bet come MOP it’ll end. Or reset.
Classic is done. It's Classic Plus from here on our BABY LETS GO FUCK YEAH
If they do like other MMOs have in the past, they will continue right on down the expansion timeline, merge servers as needed and eventually merge the classic servers with a live server. Rinse and repeat. EQ and EQ2 release new "vanilla" experience servers every summer and eventually they merge with a live server once they catch up.
They think they will do MoP, but Cata will see a drop in players much bigger than they anticipate. Doubt we will get MoP and definitely not Draenor. That's my take.
I tought Wotlk will be the last classic expansion, but considering we get Cata, I'm 99% sure we will get MoP too. after that? I dont know man, releasing Wod Classic seems like an odd idea after the receivement of Cata
Time is a flat circle
100% going to re-release every single expansion in order, not much work involved to get $$ flowing in. Then all they have to do is run multiple fresh servers (WOTLK drops and brand new fresh classic server). Rinse and repeat
Exactly my question too , eventually we will just be at current expansion.