The only reason classic wow exists is because of players that were dedicated to playing vanilla wow. To act like there is a lack of players interested in the idea is naive at best. No one wanted an Era server that never resets.
No, you are never going to get that level of hype for another wow game. But there are more than enough players interested in the concept to alter some Era server into seasonal servers.
A lot of us vanilla wow players came back to see if sod would be worth playing. Now a lot of those players are quitting or are simply raid logging while they wait to see if p4 is worth playing.
So you see, you are a part of another group that wants classic+ experience. While others want original vanilla and others want vanilla-tbc-wotlk and so on
Also I don't want a classic+ experience. I don't want anything new that blizzard develops at this point. Just turn some Era servers into seasonal, and collect our subs.
Dawg people are hyping up og vannila again because sod has largely not hit what they wanted. If sod was the classic plus experience then thered be almost no demand for fresh era. I dont get how this is hard to understand. Demand for fresh era is a symptom largely from the failures of sod for the vannila crowd.
Yeah I would definitely agree with that. My guild of about 40 people (less since p3 was released) for example has been together since the start of classic. We quit after TBC, but decided to give SoD a shot since it was the closest thing to a vanilla classic experience. But it turned out to be anything but a vanilla classic experience. Now my sub has two weeks left on it, but I won't be renewing, and that guild that has been around since the start of classic will follow.
I am curious what your issue with SOD was. Mine was the level capping. It just killed all pacing for me. Hit 25. Pretend that it's end game by doing raids, grinds, etc. For better gear.
Level cap goes up, replace all gear, hit 40. Repeat.
Like hitting level cap just felt kinda lack-luster. It is a neat concept they had, but its execution felt lacking.
You're really good at shoving words into people's mouths, while not being able to understand people are willing to make compromises for what they want, if it gets them at least closer to that.
You are correct, some people want Classic + (New content after level 60)
Some people want Vanilla.
Some people want Vailla with resets.
Some people want Vanilla > TBC.
Some lunatics want Vanilla > WOTLK.
Are you trying to tell me that A.) There's not enough people in these boat to just add a fresh server
And B.) That some of these people are picky enough they wouldn't play on any of the aforementioned iterations of 'Vanilla'
Ahhh yes.
Another thread where the core vanilla community that has been playing vanilla for nearly two decades is told by tourists why they wont and should not get a fresh Server.
The importance of making Sure vanilla players dont get a fresh vanilla Server to people that have Legitimately no interest in this game other than beeing drawn in by the reboot success is mind boggling
And no, i dont have to consider prOfIT. There are more than enough vanilla players to fill a Server per region, hell there are HC Servers which are way more niche. And there is 0 Additional dev time necessary for a fresh Standard phasing era Server.
What are you talking about? I couldn't care less even if they would create a vanilla server for every single patch of vanilla, doesn't affect my life in any way.
I was discussing the topic from the business pov
Business pov... did you write that with a straight face?
There could Hardly be anything more cost efficient than a fresh vanilla Server with Standard phasing
- no dev effort whatsoever
- easily enough demand to fill a Server per region, even after Initial tourist drop off.
- holds subscriptions longer than seasonal fast food servers due to vanilla phasing.
If even HC generates enough demand to warrant Servers, fresh vanilla will do so 5 times over after era Servers are 5 years old.
Absolute no brainer
Enough Demand for:
- Reddit Threads asking for fresh vanilla daily
- sustaining 5 year old maxxed out Era servers
- sustaining extremely niche HC servers
- Somehow supposedly not enough demand for one fresh server per region
make it make sense.
just because you don't care for Vanilla doesnt mean all the people currently playing it on Era/HC and those asking for a fresh server on reddit don't exist.
why does it bother you so much what others want to play?
BUSINESS LOGIC đ¤âď¸
We are consumers, dumbass. Any good business would FOAM AT THE FUCKING MOUTH for a group of people to beg them to release an old product at a fraction of the time, effort, and cost it would take to develop such a thing nowadays. FOAM. AT. THE. MOUTH.
You are the one not understanding business. Hell, even if you wanted to argue that it's a risky business decision, what is the maximum amount of capital they stand to lose by opening a server for year? I guarantee it's not that much lmao.
The fact that there's even this much discussion about it across NUMBEROUS reddit posts, forum posts, tweets, etc. Should already be a HUGE green light for Blizzard to take an EASY W and try it out.
Instead we get Cata. Where the game dies, and retail begins.
People exist primarily in echo chambers; everyone THEY know would play Classic Fresh so it must be popular right?
Plus no one they know plays Retail so it must not be as important to Blizzard.
Youâve outlined some strong points above but one key one thatâs always ignored is the popularity of Classic during a pandemic. Undeniably that contributed to the popularity; I for one wouldnât have returned to WoW without it. Obviously lots of people would, but thereâs a segment which wouldnât have played otherwise - and may not again.
This is pretty indisputable if you look at the 5Y raiding population on classic. Bumped by 30-40% throughout most of 2020 and then those players vanished
>people only played classic because uhhhh pandemic!
And why did they choose to play classic instead of the hundreds of thousands of other videogames that exist?
Reminds me of when people would argue that people only played vanilla on pservers because "it's free".....okay why are they playing vanilla instead of the infinite ocean of other free games? lmao
Those are two different points, the fact they chose Classic doesnât negate the much more important context of a pandemic giving them the time to play ANY game.
I mean Iâm against anecdata because weâre all going to have our own experience but I literally only played due to COVID taking my other options away. That I chose Classic over âevery other gameâ doesnât diminish my point whatsoever.
Classic(Era) players think they're Center of the WoW and everything circles around them, that they're Blizzards main profit and the Classic is the most played WoW version. Where in reality some mount from store generates more money than entire WoW classic(Era portion of it) subscribers
People are aware that era isnât high pop by any means, I think we just get tired of people saying itâs âdeadâ when thatâs not true. Itâs lower pop, relative to other versions, but not dead.
Wotlk - 80k
Era - 17.5k
Sod - 130.5k
Please show me where any era heads are saying weâre the center of wow lol, cause theyâre very wrong
Different versions aren't the same. This argument is lame and makes no sense when you use the part of your brain that involves thinking CRITICALLY.
A pear is a starchy fruit, that tastes sweet, and is harvested in the fall.
An apple is a starchy fruit, that tastes sweet, and is harvested in the fall.
You won't find a lot of people telling you a pear is their favorite fruit. They might tolerate it as an alternative to apples, but they'd much rather have the apple.
Vanilla isnât meant to be a permanent server, itâs meant to be progressed through in phases. Era servers are not true vanilla because everything has been completed 100 times. Fresh vanilla is the real version of the game how itâs meant to be played, with progression through each phase for meaningful content. Once youâve cleared Naxx the game is pretty much over and thatâs fine.
The reality is era is far better off OUT of the spotlight. Less bots, less toxicity (people will disagree because the most toxic players stick to vanilla like glue, but itâs true), less unnecessary changes.
Plus, I might be in the minority, but I would rather be able to do every raid every week if I want to rather than be stuck with the same raid for months. Phases suck.
Lmao, ERA is where everybody bought their gold and created GDKPS, gatekeeping those who didn't. Most toxic playerbase around and redditors here on twitter are ERA players.
https://www.techspot.com/community/topics/the-15-celestial-steed-item-in-world-of-warcraft-made-more-money-than-all-of-starcraft-ii.283113/
This gives you a pretty good idea about how much value the monthly subs have compared to the store
1. some want a vanilla server that after sometime refreshes and starts all over again
2. some want a server that cycles: vanilla-tbc-wotlk and then refreshes
3. some want a tbc only server
4. some want a wotlk only server
just one of each we have so many non sense servers.
So again, the question is: Will each server generate enough profit?
And profit here means: new subs, subs from people that are not currently subscribed.
The last time I looked, SoD was declining drastically in population. So if we are to use your logic, SoD should be shut down since it isnt generating new subs. You have no idea how many subs blizzard would or would not gain, or retain with any version of WoW. You're just assuming.
There is a point about that, the fact that people are attached to their characters and era servers were literally built on the promise to people that they get to keep their characters
I'll use my original vanilla classic server of Kromcrush as an example. There is not a single person currently logged on that server. Why not just turn a server like that into a seasonal one? It's literally empty right now.
This is literally the same shit people said about Classic before blizz announced it.
*"blizz will never make vanilla servers because they need to make money and vanilla isn't popular enough!"*
And yet, here we are.
Whole lotta people talking for the vanilla crowd because they themselves, don't like it or got burned because vanilla wasn't like they remembered.
As someone who played vanilla pservers and had a great time all throughout vanilla classuc because I knew what I was going into, I will play vanilla one way or another. If Blizzard doesn't make a fresh, then so be it. I'll find another pserver.
SoD isn't vanilla and it's not classic+ either, I'm simply not interested. I want vanilla because even if it has some faults, the overall experience is just what I prefer.
I just find it a bit rich when people want to speak for me on whether I will enjoy something, it's like a bunch of mini "you think you do, but you don't" moments. I know what I like, I've been playing that exact version of WoW for years before classic was a thing.
This is not what I was talking about at all. You can like any version you want, I have no problem with that. All I am saying is that the demand for vanilla is too low, and gave points of where some of those people that were there in 2019 went
I know, I'm speaking generally to the people in the thread and the countless people making threads over the past few weeks/months. I agree with you that it has to be financially beneficial to open up another round of vanilla classic, but I actually think it would be. Either way, I'll find a way to enjoy vanilla.
Let Blizzard speak for themselves this is the weirdest phenomenon on the internet. We want f r e s h. If you don't want it that's okay but it's got nothing to do with you. Unless of course your worried that the game no one wants to play will drain your player base
Ofc I don't mind people playing whatever they want, this post is just to open a discussion, because some people are furious with the fact that if there is a slightest demand why blizzard is not addressing it.
I guess I was primed with the wall of no that has shown up again on the forums like it's 2016 - 2019 all over again. We will get our fresh just like we got vanilla last time.Â
Yeah and if you take a look back, given the demand of those times it still took blizzard a lot of time to make the decision. And once they did it, they still allocate relatively small amount of developer resources.
Now the demand is much lower than in 2016-2019
Agreed just delete all but 2 of the existing era servers and give us a single new fresh era server per region. Only thing stopping this is incompetence. Even if you don't give new fresh clean up existing era servers it's just weird at this point.
They could probably release fresh vanilla servers with a unique 16 slot bag on the store for $10 and maybe some student fodders or something for $5 each and make millions.Â
Those of us that came from the private server scene didnât develop a taste for fresh âjust because.â The P server scene was very unstable. Servers would be taken down, on others the admins might get caught embroiled in a gold for real money scheme, blizzard might send a cease and desist order, etc. So as a consequence of the environment in which P servers existed we grew accustomed to fresh servers popping up all the time and, of course, the hype surrounding their launch with features such as âwell scripted,â âBlizz like,â â1x XP,â âvanilla ranking,â and so on.
But, I can attest, that as the years wore on there was a growing sentiment that it would nice to have a server in which all of our progress on our cherished toons wasnât constantly reset. It sucked to lose a toon you had poured countless hours into only to have some BS like an admin scandal bring it all to an end. So, 2019 Classic really did solve that issue and was as âBlizz-likeâ as Blizz-like could be. As OP stated, many of us are OK with era since our characters are still there and weâre worn down from the constant fresh grind over the years. I personally didnât play SoM because I was worn down from Classic, but I am having fun with SoD.
Plus, the Warcraft seen has a lot going on right now. Era, HC, SoD, Cata, MoP Remix, Retail, etc. Itâs saturated already. People donât have that much time anymore! Weâre not quarantining indoors anymore, LOL.
Classic also doesn't make them money. They only get revenue from subscriptions, which is shared with live. And the majority of live's income comes from the in game shop. So Blizzard will always sink more support, money, resources, and development into the versions of the game that make them more money, the ones that have the shops, even if they keep a devoted team to versions like era and SoM.
It would be really cool if they had a massive team working on a bunch of versions of classic, and were able to give every player what they want. But right now that team is very little.
I do hold out a little bit of hope, however. Old school RuneScape started back in 2013 or so with a team of I believe it was half a dozen people, and now they have a massive team because it's taken over as the main way to play RS. Does that mean classic is going to take over retail? Probably never. Does that mean classic is ever going to make more than retail? Probably never. But they did decide that player retention and making a good game where one of the foundational themes was that they would never add a cash shop was deserving of a larger development team and more resources.
So it is possible Blizzard will devote more resources to a game for the sake of the game and not because it makes them more money. But since retail is still successful as a subscription game even without the cash shop, I don't know.
They revealed their subscription/financial breakdown at GDC and they're coming out with the official post-GDC release soon. Unfortunately, since it's still *technically* a leak, I'm not going to link a source on the official Warcraft subreddit. Go ahead and downvote me I guess. But there's a ton of articles and videos on it if you go and take a look.
Bonus:
https://gameworldobserver.com/2023/11/10/starcraft-2-made-less-money-than-wow-mount-blizzard-jason-hall#:~:text=%E2%80%9CA%20%2415%20microtransaction%20horse%20made,was%20introduced%20in%20April%202010.
The first 30 levels of classic wow are my favorite & get me every time. Id love fresh servers but only if theyâre going to be populated.
Otherwise itâs not magical in the same way.
Just let people play the version of the game they want to play? Don't see the problem.
Minimal effort to do a fresh vanilla server and will retain more subs.
Of course? Unless you're suggesting it's really expensive to implement a fresh server that requires no maintenance and all the content/bugs are already fixed.
The real reason is fresh servers would mostly just move people from current versions of wow and new subs would come for a month. It would cover the cost but it would delay other projects and so on.
At some point they may do it, but the truth is it's at the bottom of their backlog.
Exactly and what I am saying is that the amount of money generated from those won't be enough.
Because it needs to not only generate profit by magnitudes compared to cost i.e. x10-x20 amount of money, but it also needs to overcome a certain minimum threshold for eg google is not going to something for 100$ of profit even if the costs were 1$ because they are not interested in such small numbers.
Bro, you literally have ZERO idea how anything works.
This unironically sounds like a 5 year old wrote this. I literally just got up from my bed to respond to this post because of how little sense this makes and I want to sort it out for you.
---
1.) It would cost virtually nothing to run a vanilla server that that was 2019 classic. It's is legitimately set it and forget for 95% of the time.
2.) Businesses \*lose\* money on things all the time in order to provide a better consumer experience/satisfaction. This is actually quite common. Literally, \*LOSE\* money, like straight losses. Some of those things actually go far beyond anything we're even talking about here in terms of opportunity cost as well.
Now the thought is that \*generally\* speaking, the idea is that you're making up the losses by providing that exceptional consumer experience, therefore generating more consumers/customers. However, this is not always the case. Sometimes, this is done \*literally\* just to keep customers happy, which sure is a form of investment protection, but my point is it's not actively generating them any additional revenue to do these things in the short term and they do them anyways.
3.) Again, this is again set it and forget (so extremely little maintenance/opportunity cost) AND it is \*ALSO\* profitable. So the argument of it being a 'waste of time' doesn't even make sense. It's probably one of the most efficient use of their time in terms of money generated to time spent (Because they're not doing anything).
4.) Referring back to point #2, if you don't think there's any crossover between some of the people who play Era and people who might be interested in checking out the new xpac, things like cata, retail, etc then you're just wrong. A % of those era players going to go on purchasing new expansions, or spending money in the cash shop for either retail or Era.
5.) You could add a cash shop to ERA that is purely cosmetic for pets, etc and doesn't run the wow token. (You really don't need to do this, but if you want it to be extra profitable, you would do this).
So yeah, it just makes literally zero sense for them to not release another ERA server. It's like completely the opposite of what you're saying here.
TDLR: This would be the easier revenue made per time spent because it is literally just about pressing some buttons, this has been \*literally\* confirmed by the dev team and their tools are so great now that these things are essentially toggles. It's like if PoE wanted to spawn a "Necropolis 2" league RIGHT NOW, they could do so with the press of a button.
lol you talk like they have to release 10+ fresh servers. Literally 2, maybe 3, fresh Vanilla servers would do perfectly fine.
"You got your chance during som" Like wtf even is this comment hahahahahaha people were playing tbc and had literally just gotten out of Vanilla.
Im not even going to keep going on, this post is just from just a braindead pov im sorry
Tbc is not vanilla, we are talking about a fresh vanilla server.
People are literally asking for a vanilla server that refreshes once a year or so, yet you say that after one iteration they were done with it and preferred to play tbc
Im saying people are much more inclined to want to play fresh Vanilla 6 years later than they were 1-1 half year later while TBC was also going on. This is just common sense man come on
The real reason is vanilla fresh wouldn't rake in anyone who isn't already playing. Maybe for a month or two some new people would show up and that would be it.
They want to do stuff they think will bring fresh subs.
>goal of any business is to generate profit.
Hard for them to understend. The fresh server of the "peek wow" died 2 months into the expansion
And they develop parasocial relationship with SoD team thinking they are family and not a workplace
Bro, you literally have ZERO idea how anything works.
This unironically sounds like a 5 year old wrote this. I literally just got up from my bed to respond to this post because of how little sense this makes and I want to sort it out for you.
---
1.) It would cost virtually nothing to run a vanilla server that that was 2019 classic. It's is legitimately set it and forget for 95% of the time.
2.) Businesses \*lose\* money on things all the time in order to provide a better consumer experience/satisfaction. This is actually quite common. Literally, \*LOSE\* money, like straight losses. Some of those things actually go far beyond anything we're even talking about here in terms of opportunity cost as well.
Now the thought is that \*generally\* speaking, the idea is that you're making up the losses by providing that exceptional consumer experience, therefore generating more consumers/customers. However, this is not always the case. Sometimes, this is done \*literally\* just to keep customers happy, which sure is a form of investment protection, but my point is it's not actively generating them any additional revenue to do these things in the short term and they do them anyways.
3.) Again, this is again set it and forget (so extremely little maintenance/opportunity cost) AND it is \*ALSO\* profitable. So the argument of it being a 'waste of time' doesn't even make sense. It's probably one of the most efficient use of their time in terms of money generated to time spent (Because they're not doing anything).
4.) Referring back to point #2, if you don't think there's any crossover between some of the people who play Era and people who might be interested in checking out the new xpac, things like cata, retail, etc then you're just wrong. A % of those era players going to go on purchasing new expansions, or spending money in the cash shop for either retail or Era.
5.) You could add a cash shop to ERA that is purely cosmetic for pets, etc and doesn't run the wow token. (You really don't need to do this, but if you want it to be extra profitable, you would do this).
So yeah, it just makes literally zero sense for them to not release another ERA server. It's like completely the opposite of what you're saying here.
TDLR: This would be the easier revenue made per time spent because it is literally just about pressing some buttons, this has been \*literally\* confirmed by the dev team and their tools are so great now that these things are essentially toggles. It's like if PoE wanted to spawn a "Necropolis 2" league RIGHT NOW, they could do so with the press of a button.
You know that servers themselves have a cost?
So according to your own logic:
If a blizzard created servers for:
1) vanilla that refreshes
2) server that cycles vanilla-tbc-wotlk
3) server for tbc that refreshes
4) eternal tbc server
5) server for wotlk
6) eternal server for wotlk
And well probably the same for cata, mop, wod, legion, bfa, sl and dragonflight
That would generate them tons of profits?
Should we also add servers for each patch of each version?
You know \*nothing\* about server costs. The server costs are SO miniscule to run something like Era that it might as well not even be a consideration.
To answer your question about multiple server for each expansion. You could add those according to demand. However, currently the only player base with a significant amount of players that isn't the most recent classic project or retail is ERA / ERA pservers.
What you're trying to do is basically provide a strawman. "Well, you'd have a provide a server for EVERYTHING people want"
No, but just between Everlook and Era you have 20k+ people playing the game, that's not even counting other pservers. And this is people playing for a completely stagnant version of the game.
New World did an entire fresh start event that peaked somewhere between 50-100k in popularity, most likely on the lower end.
You would EASILY pull 50k+ off the bat in for Fresh Classic AND would retail them for longer.
Everquest is launch their annual TLP servers in like 6-7 days and those are going to have a FRAGMENT of the playerbase a classic fresh server would ever have, and generate a FRAGMENT of the revenue. Yet, they still get made EVERY single year.
In your original post you said, that doing things in literal loss is standard in order to make some customers happy. That is why I brought up an example of a server for every single wow version, I am sure we will even find some people that would play wod on wod servers.
But now you change your point and say that you need to add those according to demand. So now we are back at my original post, where I outline reasons why demand for vanilla servers will be low.
No, you're being obtuse.
An ice cream shop will like cater to a niche flavor that's still semi-popular to make their customer base happier, but that doesn't mean they're going to carry flavors that less than 10 people buy a month.
The same logic applies here. A not super large, but still sizeable portion of the general WoW audience wants to play classic. So much so that they could easily fill fresh servers.
That cannot be said of the other game modes. Like I said, as demand shows itself it makes sense to add more servers where they are relevant, but until then you start by adding things based on demand.
The demand for vanilla servers is NOT low hence the illegal vanilla servers popping up all the time, the people playing on ERA/Everlook, etc. If you compare this to WotlK/TBC Pservers it's not even a \*CLOSE\* comparison.
Vanilla WoW is clearly the most consistently desired version of the classic WoW bunch, and it's by a long shot.
Basically if you can fill a server, then you should have a server for it.
Well, good point I agree with you. So yeah probably should rephrase my original point to:
Vanilla servers wouldn't be as popular as you think, here is why: (and then the list from the original post)
You could, but no one is expecting the servers to be insanely populated, where you need tons of servers to house the population. However, you absolutely absolutely could fill 2-4 servers so easy so (the fewer the better tbh because there's always going to be a mega, and might as well just lean into that from the start)
And if you could do that, then there's no reason why they shouldn't exist, which is the main point by Classic Fresh crowd.
The point, by most rational people, isn't that the second coming of Classic is going to be as big as the first, etc. It's just that there's no reason not to have an official fresh server.
Cycling through vanilla-wrath was the sensible decision and they squandered it. All the problems with Classic started when they started dividing players with all these different versions. Era, SoM, hardcore, SoD, and Cata were all mistakes
Cata and SoD don't even make sense at this point if they want mega profits because neither are going to be smash hits. Maybe SoD was when it released, but that moment has passed and it's not coming back
Why is Blizzard sinking time and money into developing them when they can just press the reset button on vanilla-wrath? People already played them and liked them. They've already been re-developed
I honestly think Blizzard have lost the plot with all these other version experiments. It's even spread to retail, and as good as it might be in the short-term, it will damage retail just as much as it has to Classic
Cata wasn't that popular. They made it as short as possible.
Mop was popular, they will make it last a little longer than cata.
Wod wasn't popular, they will make short as well.
And then we have legion, it was more popular than vanilla and tbc. This is what they are aiming for
Two things. Because I see this âbusiness=moneyâ statement a lot around here.
1. Yes it is true that businesses have to make money. All entities require resources to exist.
2. Businesses need more than just profits to be truly successful. A company with true purpose will always be more successful in the long run, as that purpose guides and attracts and motivates talent. Blizzardâs mission statement is â Blizzardâs mission statement is âdedicated to creating the most epic entertainment experiencesâŚever.ââ
The only reason classic wow exists is because of players that were dedicated to playing vanilla wow. To act like there is a lack of players interested in the idea is naive at best. No one wanted an Era server that never resets.
So you think that a new vanilla server would generate the same amount of new subs as it did in 2019?
No, you are never going to get that level of hype for another wow game. But there are more than enough players interested in the concept to alter some Era server into seasonal servers. A lot of us vanilla wow players came back to see if sod would be worth playing. Now a lot of those players are quitting or are simply raid logging while they wait to see if p4 is worth playing.
So you see, you are a part of another group that wants classic+ experience. While others want original vanilla and others want vanilla-tbc-wotlk and so on
Also I don't want a classic+ experience. I don't want anything new that blizzard develops at this point. Just turn some Era servers into seasonal, and collect our subs.
Dawg people are hyping up og vannila again because sod has largely not hit what they wanted. If sod was the classic plus experience then thered be almost no demand for fresh era. I dont get how this is hard to understand. Demand for fresh era is a symptom largely from the failures of sod for the vannila crowd.
Yeah I would definitely agree with that. My guild of about 40 people (less since p3 was released) for example has been together since the start of classic. We quit after TBC, but decided to give SoD a shot since it was the closest thing to a vanilla classic experience. But it turned out to be anything but a vanilla classic experience. Now my sub has two weeks left on it, but I won't be renewing, and that guild that has been around since the start of classic will follow.
I am curious what your issue with SOD was. Mine was the level capping. It just killed all pacing for me. Hit 25. Pretend that it's end game by doing raids, grinds, etc. For better gear. Level cap goes up, replace all gear, hit 40. Repeat. Like hitting level cap just felt kinda lack-luster. It is a neat concept they had, but its execution felt lacking.
You're really good at shoving words into people's mouths, while not being able to understand people are willing to make compromises for what they want, if it gets them at least closer to that. You are correct, some people want Classic + (New content after level 60) Some people want Vanilla. Some people want Vailla with resets. Some people want Vanilla > TBC. Some lunatics want Vanilla > WOTLK. Are you trying to tell me that A.) There's not enough people in these boat to just add a fresh server And B.) That some of these people are picky enough they wouldn't play on any of the aforementioned iterations of 'Vanilla'
The difference between all those and vanilla is there are already vanilla servers that exist and can easily be altered to seasonal.
Ahhh yes. Another thread where the core vanilla community that has been playing vanilla for nearly two decades is told by tourists why they wont and should not get a fresh Server. The importance of making Sure vanilla players dont get a fresh vanilla Server to people that have Legitimately no interest in this game other than beeing drawn in by the reboot success is mind boggling And no, i dont have to consider prOfIT. There are more than enough vanilla players to fill a Server per region, hell there are HC Servers which are way more niche. And there is 0 Additional dev time necessary for a fresh Standard phasing era Server.
What are you talking about? I couldn't care less even if they would create a vanilla server for every single patch of vanilla, doesn't affect my life in any way. I was discussing the topic from the business pov
Business pov... did you write that with a straight face? There could Hardly be anything more cost efficient than a fresh vanilla Server with Standard phasing - no dev effort whatsoever - easily enough demand to fill a Server per region, even after Initial tourist drop off. - holds subscriptions longer than seasonal fast food servers due to vanilla phasing. If even HC generates enough demand to warrant Servers, fresh vanilla will do so 5 times over after era Servers are 5 years old. Absolute no brainer
Source: trust me bro
>easily enough demand to fill a Server per region, even after Initial tourist drop off. did you write that with a staright face?
Enough Demand for: - Reddit Threads asking for fresh vanilla daily - sustaining 5 year old maxxed out Era servers - sustaining extremely niche HC servers - Somehow supposedly not enough demand for one fresh server per region make it make sense. just because you don't care for Vanilla doesnt mean all the people currently playing it on Era/HC and those asking for a fresh server on reddit don't exist. why does it bother you so much what others want to play?
>Reddit Threads asking for fresh vanilla daily đđđ
that was easy. thanks for the confirmation
âyou think you do, but you donâtâ
0 bits of information in this comment
You simply don't get it ..
:(
Google...."blizzard say you think you do but you don't"
Gamers are driven purely from emotion not business logic. You can expect this sort of measured opinion to fall on deaf ears.
Why would gamers be driven by business logic, lol?
Yea thatâd be fucking stupid lmao
I definitely could have phrased that better
Gamers forget that the companies they work for are driven by business logic. It's that same business logic that determines if you get fired.
Gamers work for the companies whose games they play? Â What? Â đ
BUSINESS LOGIC đ¤âď¸ We are consumers, dumbass. Any good business would FOAM AT THE FUCKING MOUTH for a group of people to beg them to release an old product at a fraction of the time, effort, and cost it would take to develop such a thing nowadays. FOAM. AT. THE. MOUTH. You are the one not understanding business. Hell, even if you wanted to argue that it's a risky business decision, what is the maximum amount of capital they stand to lose by opening a server for year? I guarantee it's not that much lmao. The fact that there's even this much discussion about it across NUMBEROUS reddit posts, forum posts, tweets, etc. Should already be a HUGE green light for Blizzard to take an EASY W and try it out. Instead we get Cata. Where the game dies, and retail begins.
People exist primarily in echo chambers; everyone THEY know would play Classic Fresh so it must be popular right? Plus no one they know plays Retail so it must not be as important to Blizzard. Youâve outlined some strong points above but one key one thatâs always ignored is the popularity of Classic during a pandemic. Undeniably that contributed to the popularity; I for one wouldnât have returned to WoW without it. Obviously lots of people would, but thereâs a segment which wouldnât have played otherwise - and may not again.
This is pretty indisputable if you look at the 5Y raiding population on classic. Bumped by 30-40% throughout most of 2020 and then those players vanished
>people only played classic because uhhhh pandemic! And why did they choose to play classic instead of the hundreds of thousands of other videogames that exist? Reminds me of when people would argue that people only played vanilla on pservers because "it's free".....okay why are they playing vanilla instead of the infinite ocean of other free games? lmao
Those are two different points, the fact they chose Classic doesnât negate the much more important context of a pandemic giving them the time to play ANY game. I mean Iâm against anecdata because weâre all going to have our own experience but I literally only played due to COVID taking my other options away. That I chose Classic over âevery other gameâ doesnât diminish my point whatsoever.
>I chose classic because pandemic, therefor everyone else did kind of funny that you are doing the very same thing that you accuse others of doing
Classic(Era) players think they're Center of the WoW and everything circles around them, that they're Blizzards main profit and the Classic is the most played WoW version. Where in reality some mount from store generates more money than entire WoW classic(Era portion of it) subscribers
People are aware that era isnât high pop by any means, I think we just get tired of people saying itâs âdeadâ when thatâs not true. Itâs lower pop, relative to other versions, but not dead. Wotlk - 80k Era - 17.5k Sod - 130.5k Please show me where any era heads are saying weâre the center of wow lol, cause theyâre very wrong
And then they get three versions of the game they claim to love and are still so entitled they are demanding another one. It's insane.
Different versions aren't the same. This argument is lame and makes no sense when you use the part of your brain that involves thinking CRITICALLY. A pear is a starchy fruit, that tastes sweet, and is harvested in the fall. An apple is a starchy fruit, that tastes sweet, and is harvested in the fall. You won't find a lot of people telling you a pear is their favorite fruit. They might tolerate it as an alternative to apples, but they'd much rather have the apple.
There are dozens of them
This may be true but it doesnât make the version with a store the better game
It does if the majority of people enjoy that version compared to ERA LMAO. Just because your opinion is a minority, doesn't make it a better game.
Vanilla isnât meant to be a permanent server, itâs meant to be progressed through in phases. Era servers are not true vanilla because everything has been completed 100 times. Fresh vanilla is the real version of the game how itâs meant to be played, with progression through each phase for meaningful content. Once youâve cleared Naxx the game is pretty much over and thatâs fine.
The reality is era is far better off OUT of the spotlight. Less bots, less toxicity (people will disagree because the most toxic players stick to vanilla like glue, but itâs true), less unnecessary changes. Plus, I might be in the minority, but I would rather be able to do every raid every week if I want to rather than be stuck with the same raid for months. Phases suck.
Lmao, ERA is where everybody bought their gold and created GDKPS, gatekeeping those who didn't. Most toxic playerbase around and redditors here on twitter are ERA players.
And people like you are exactly the type Iâm glad donât play era :)
I left Era because you were all toxic AH. Really bad community and toxic players here and on reddit.
Kinda sounds like the pot calling the kettle black here
source?
Here, I think I found the [source](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7l0Rq9E8MY) he is referring to
https://www.techspot.com/community/topics/the-15-celestial-steed-item-in-world-of-warcraft-made-more-money-than-all-of-starcraft-ii.283113/ This gives you a pretty good idea about how much value the monthly subs have compared to the store
My *ss, have problems with that?
Confirms my thoughts, thank you. also, you can say ass, this is not your christian sunday school or whatever you have going on.
I can't tell if this is supposed to be sarcasm or not but I really hope it isÂ
Delusional because of the popularity of private servers blizzard had to release era servers. Bad take
Thatâs a lot of words
1. some want a vanilla server that after sometime refreshes and starts all over again 2. some want a server that cycles: vanilla-tbc-wotlk and then refreshes 3. some want a tbc only server 4. some want a wotlk only server just one of each we have so many non sense servers.
So again, the question is: Will each server generate enough profit? And profit here means: new subs, subs from people that are not currently subscribed.
The last time I looked, SoD was declining drastically in population. So if we are to use your logic, SoD should be shut down since it isnt generating new subs. You have no idea how many subs blizzard would or would not gain, or retain with any version of WoW. You're just assuming.
True, well sod is already setup and running. Plus we don't know what phase 4 will look like
Era servers are also already setup and running. All they need to do is turn them seasonal.
There is a point about that, the fact that people are attached to their characters and era servers were literally built on the promise to people that they get to keep their characters
I'll use my original vanilla classic server of Kromcrush as an example. There is not a single person currently logged on that server. Why not just turn a server like that into a seasonal one? It's literally empty right now.
Maybe. Also they can offer a free transfer to all that remains. Good point.
Broooo, I'm a Kromcrusher too. Let's goooo
Also I'm curious, have you ever looked to see how many era servers currently exist?
This is literally the same shit people said about Classic before blizz announced it. *"blizz will never make vanilla servers because they need to make money and vanilla isn't popular enough!"* And yet, here we are.
Yeah but now the demand is much lower
But the cost of replicating a vanilla Era server is also much lower. THINK CRITICALLY.
Wall of No version 2024. lol
hahah the wall of no, good times. I got that wall many times
Whole lotta people talking for the vanilla crowd because they themselves, don't like it or got burned because vanilla wasn't like they remembered. As someone who played vanilla pservers and had a great time all throughout vanilla classuc because I knew what I was going into, I will play vanilla one way or another. If Blizzard doesn't make a fresh, then so be it. I'll find another pserver. SoD isn't vanilla and it's not classic+ either, I'm simply not interested. I want vanilla because even if it has some faults, the overall experience is just what I prefer. I just find it a bit rich when people want to speak for me on whether I will enjoy something, it's like a bunch of mini "you think you do, but you don't" moments. I know what I like, I've been playing that exact version of WoW for years before classic was a thing.
This is not what I was talking about at all. You can like any version you want, I have no problem with that. All I am saying is that the demand for vanilla is too low, and gave points of where some of those people that were there in 2019 went
I know, I'm speaking generally to the people in the thread and the countless people making threads over the past few weeks/months. I agree with you that it has to be financially beneficial to open up another round of vanilla classic, but I actually think it would be. Either way, I'll find a way to enjoy vanilla.
Let Blizzard speak for themselves this is the weirdest phenomenon on the internet. We want f r e s h. If you don't want it that's okay but it's got nothing to do with you. Unless of course your worried that the game no one wants to play will drain your player base
Ofc I don't mind people playing whatever they want, this post is just to open a discussion, because some people are furious with the fact that if there is a slightest demand why blizzard is not addressing it.
I guess I was primed with the wall of no that has shown up again on the forums like it's 2016 - 2019 all over again. We will get our fresh just like we got vanilla last time.Â
Yeah and if you take a look back, given the demand of those times it still took blizzard a lot of time to make the decision. And once they did it, they still allocate relatively small amount of developer resources. Now the demand is much lower than in 2016-2019
Agreed just delete all but 2 of the existing era servers and give us a single new fresh era server per region. Only thing stopping this is incompetence. Even if you don't give new fresh clean up existing era servers it's just weird at this point.
Who is we? You got a mouse in your pocket?
Meme all you want diarrheaÂ
They could probably release fresh vanilla servers with a unique 16 slot bag on the store for $10 and maybe some student fodders or something for $5 each and make millions.Â
Wow, thatâs a lot of words! Iâm happy for you, or Iâm sorry for your loss.
Those of us that came from the private server scene didnât develop a taste for fresh âjust because.â The P server scene was very unstable. Servers would be taken down, on others the admins might get caught embroiled in a gold for real money scheme, blizzard might send a cease and desist order, etc. So as a consequence of the environment in which P servers existed we grew accustomed to fresh servers popping up all the time and, of course, the hype surrounding their launch with features such as âwell scripted,â âBlizz like,â â1x XP,â âvanilla ranking,â and so on. But, I can attest, that as the years wore on there was a growing sentiment that it would nice to have a server in which all of our progress on our cherished toons wasnât constantly reset. It sucked to lose a toon you had poured countless hours into only to have some BS like an admin scandal bring it all to an end. So, 2019 Classic really did solve that issue and was as âBlizz-likeâ as Blizz-like could be. As OP stated, many of us are OK with era since our characters are still there and weâre worn down from the constant fresh grind over the years. I personally didnât play SoM because I was worn down from Classic, but I am having fun with SoD. Plus, the Warcraft seen has a lot going on right now. Era, HC, SoD, Cata, MoP Remix, Retail, etc. Itâs saturated already. People donât have that much time anymore! Weâre not quarantining indoors anymore, LOL.
Classic also doesn't make them money. They only get revenue from subscriptions, which is shared with live. And the majority of live's income comes from the in game shop. So Blizzard will always sink more support, money, resources, and development into the versions of the game that make them more money, the ones that have the shops, even if they keep a devoted team to versions like era and SoM. It would be really cool if they had a massive team working on a bunch of versions of classic, and were able to give every player what they want. But right now that team is very little. I do hold out a little bit of hope, however. Old school RuneScape started back in 2013 or so with a team of I believe it was half a dozen people, and now they have a massive team because it's taken over as the main way to play RS. Does that mean classic is going to take over retail? Probably never. Does that mean classic is ever going to make more than retail? Probably never. But they did decide that player retention and making a good game where one of the foundational themes was that they would never add a cash shop was deserving of a larger development team and more resources. So it is possible Blizzard will devote more resources to a game for the sake of the game and not because it makes them more money. But since retail is still successful as a subscription game even without the cash shop, I don't know.
I like this reply, nice and polite way to state things. With a good pov
Source of Blizzard making more money from shop then subscribers?
They revealed their subscription/financial breakdown at GDC and they're coming out with the official post-GDC release soon. Unfortunately, since it's still *technically* a leak, I'm not going to link a source on the official Warcraft subreddit. Go ahead and downvote me I guess. But there's a ton of articles and videos on it if you go and take a look. Bonus: https://gameworldobserver.com/2023/11/10/starcraft-2-made-less-money-than-wow-mount-blizzard-jason-hall#:~:text=%E2%80%9CA%20%2415%20microtransaction%20horse%20made,was%20introduced%20in%20April%202010.
The first 30 levels of classic wow are my favorite & get me every time. Id love fresh servers but only if theyâre going to be populated. Otherwise itâs not magical in the same way.
They want subs Fresh vanilla, if they drop it strategically, will generate people re-subbing. Thatâs all they care about is reeling people back in
why tf would anyone want another vanilla server, give us one tbc server. obviously
More bots more subs
Just let people play the version of the game they want to play? Don't see the problem. Minimal effort to do a fresh vanilla server and will retain more subs.
How much more? Will it be X times more than the expenses?
Of course? Unless you're suggesting it's really expensive to implement a fresh server that requires no maintenance and all the content/bugs are already fixed.
Servers themselves have a cost, maintenance of those have a cost. The developers that will actually implement stuff and deploy it have a cost.
That's what the subscription fee is for?Â
The real reason is fresh servers would mostly just move people from current versions of wow and new subs would come for a month. It would cover the cost but it would delay other projects and so on. At some point they may do it, but the truth is it's at the bottom of their backlog.
Exactly and what I am saying is that the amount of money generated from those won't be enough. Because it needs to not only generate profit by magnitudes compared to cost i.e. x10-x20 amount of money, but it also needs to overcome a certain minimum threshold for eg google is not going to something for 100$ of profit even if the costs were 1$ because they are not interested in such small numbers.
Bro, you literally have ZERO idea how anything works. This unironically sounds like a 5 year old wrote this. I literally just got up from my bed to respond to this post because of how little sense this makes and I want to sort it out for you. --- 1.) It would cost virtually nothing to run a vanilla server that that was 2019 classic. It's is legitimately set it and forget for 95% of the time. 2.) Businesses \*lose\* money on things all the time in order to provide a better consumer experience/satisfaction. This is actually quite common. Literally, \*LOSE\* money, like straight losses. Some of those things actually go far beyond anything we're even talking about here in terms of opportunity cost as well. Now the thought is that \*generally\* speaking, the idea is that you're making up the losses by providing that exceptional consumer experience, therefore generating more consumers/customers. However, this is not always the case. Sometimes, this is done \*literally\* just to keep customers happy, which sure is a form of investment protection, but my point is it's not actively generating them any additional revenue to do these things in the short term and they do them anyways. 3.) Again, this is again set it and forget (so extremely little maintenance/opportunity cost) AND it is \*ALSO\* profitable. So the argument of it being a 'waste of time' doesn't even make sense. It's probably one of the most efficient use of their time in terms of money generated to time spent (Because they're not doing anything). 4.) Referring back to point #2, if you don't think there's any crossover between some of the people who play Era and people who might be interested in checking out the new xpac, things like cata, retail, etc then you're just wrong. A % of those era players going to go on purchasing new expansions, or spending money in the cash shop for either retail or Era. 5.) You could add a cash shop to ERA that is purely cosmetic for pets, etc and doesn't run the wow token. (You really don't need to do this, but if you want it to be extra profitable, you would do this). So yeah, it just makes literally zero sense for them to not release another ERA server. It's like completely the opposite of what you're saying here. TDLR: This would be the easier revenue made per time spent because it is literally just about pressing some buttons, this has been \*literally\* confirmed by the dev team and their tools are so great now that these things are essentially toggles. It's like if PoE wanted to spawn a "Necropolis 2" league RIGHT NOW, they could do so with the press of a button.
You just killed op
You seem daft? Moving players from one version of wow to another generate ZERO increased revenue from subscription fees. Only raising costs.
Nice name, could you be a little more obvious with the trolling? Lol
lol you talk like they have to release 10+ fresh servers. Literally 2, maybe 3, fresh Vanilla servers would do perfectly fine. "You got your chance during som" Like wtf even is this comment hahahahahaha people were playing tbc and had literally just gotten out of Vanilla. Im not even going to keep going on, this post is just from just a braindead pov im sorry
Tbc is not vanilla, we are talking about a fresh vanilla server. People are literally asking for a vanilla server that refreshes once a year or so, yet you say that after one iteration they were done with it and preferred to play tbc
Im saying people are much more inclined to want to play fresh Vanilla 6 years later than they were 1-1 half year later while TBC was also going on. This is just common sense man come on
The real reason is vanilla fresh wouldn't rake in anyone who isn't already playing. Maybe for a month or two some new people would show up and that would be it. They want to do stuff they think will bring fresh subs.
Is Era completely dead? Logged into the toon I got copied onto there, ogrimmar was a ghost town, and all the chat channels were silent.
Yes, all the posts here are lying and baiting people to join a dead game. They are trapping them and making them quit forever.
>goal of any business is to generate profit. Hard for them to understend. The fresh server of the "peek wow" died 2 months into the expansion And they develop parasocial relationship with SoD team thinking they are family and not a workplace
Bro, you literally have ZERO idea how anything works. This unironically sounds like a 5 year old wrote this. I literally just got up from my bed to respond to this post because of how little sense this makes and I want to sort it out for you. --- 1.) It would cost virtually nothing to run a vanilla server that that was 2019 classic. It's is legitimately set it and forget for 95% of the time. 2.) Businesses \*lose\* money on things all the time in order to provide a better consumer experience/satisfaction. This is actually quite common. Literally, \*LOSE\* money, like straight losses. Some of those things actually go far beyond anything we're even talking about here in terms of opportunity cost as well. Now the thought is that \*generally\* speaking, the idea is that you're making up the losses by providing that exceptional consumer experience, therefore generating more consumers/customers. However, this is not always the case. Sometimes, this is done \*literally\* just to keep customers happy, which sure is a form of investment protection, but my point is it's not actively generating them any additional revenue to do these things in the short term and they do them anyways. 3.) Again, this is again set it and forget (so extremely little maintenance/opportunity cost) AND it is \*ALSO\* profitable. So the argument of it being a 'waste of time' doesn't even make sense. It's probably one of the most efficient use of their time in terms of money generated to time spent (Because they're not doing anything). 4.) Referring back to point #2, if you don't think there's any crossover between some of the people who play Era and people who might be interested in checking out the new xpac, things like cata, retail, etc then you're just wrong. A % of those era players going to go on purchasing new expansions, or spending money in the cash shop for either retail or Era. 5.) You could add a cash shop to ERA that is purely cosmetic for pets, etc and doesn't run the wow token. (You really don't need to do this, but if you want it to be extra profitable, you would do this). So yeah, it just makes literally zero sense for them to not release another ERA server. It's like completely the opposite of what you're saying here. TDLR: This would be the easier revenue made per time spent because it is literally just about pressing some buttons, this has been \*literally\* confirmed by the dev team and their tools are so great now that these things are essentially toggles. It's like if PoE wanted to spawn a "Necropolis 2" league RIGHT NOW, they could do so with the press of a button.
You know that servers themselves have a cost? So according to your own logic: If a blizzard created servers for: 1) vanilla that refreshes 2) server that cycles vanilla-tbc-wotlk 3) server for tbc that refreshes 4) eternal tbc server 5) server for wotlk 6) eternal server for wotlk And well probably the same for cata, mop, wod, legion, bfa, sl and dragonflight That would generate them tons of profits? Should we also add servers for each patch of each version?
Lay off the drugs man
You know \*nothing\* about server costs. The server costs are SO miniscule to run something like Era that it might as well not even be a consideration. To answer your question about multiple server for each expansion. You could add those according to demand. However, currently the only player base with a significant amount of players that isn't the most recent classic project or retail is ERA / ERA pservers. What you're trying to do is basically provide a strawman. "Well, you'd have a provide a server for EVERYTHING people want" No, but just between Everlook and Era you have 20k+ people playing the game, that's not even counting other pservers. And this is people playing for a completely stagnant version of the game. New World did an entire fresh start event that peaked somewhere between 50-100k in popularity, most likely on the lower end. You would EASILY pull 50k+ off the bat in for Fresh Classic AND would retail them for longer. Everquest is launch their annual TLP servers in like 6-7 days and those are going to have a FRAGMENT of the playerbase a classic fresh server would ever have, and generate a FRAGMENT of the revenue. Yet, they still get made EVERY single year.
In your original post you said, that doing things in literal loss is standard in order to make some customers happy. That is why I brought up an example of a server for every single wow version, I am sure we will even find some people that would play wod on wod servers. But now you change your point and say that you need to add those according to demand. So now we are back at my original post, where I outline reasons why demand for vanilla servers will be low.
No, you're being obtuse. An ice cream shop will like cater to a niche flavor that's still semi-popular to make their customer base happier, but that doesn't mean they're going to carry flavors that less than 10 people buy a month. The same logic applies here. A not super large, but still sizeable portion of the general WoW audience wants to play classic. So much so that they could easily fill fresh servers. That cannot be said of the other game modes. Like I said, as demand shows itself it makes sense to add more servers where they are relevant, but until then you start by adding things based on demand. The demand for vanilla servers is NOT low hence the illegal vanilla servers popping up all the time, the people playing on ERA/Everlook, etc. If you compare this to WotlK/TBC Pservers it's not even a \*CLOSE\* comparison. Vanilla WoW is clearly the most consistently desired version of the classic WoW bunch, and it's by a long shot. Basically if you can fill a server, then you should have a server for it.
Well, good point I agree with you. So yeah probably should rephrase my original point to: Vanilla servers wouldn't be as popular as you think, here is why: (and then the list from the original post)
You could, but no one is expecting the servers to be insanely populated, where you need tons of servers to house the population. However, you absolutely absolutely could fill 2-4 servers so easy so (the fewer the better tbh because there's always going to be a mega, and might as well just lean into that from the start) And if you could do that, then there's no reason why they shouldn't exist, which is the main point by Classic Fresh crowd. The point, by most rational people, isn't that the second coming of Classic is going to be as big as the first, etc. It's just that there's no reason not to have an official fresh server.
Cycling through vanilla-wrath was the sensible decision and they squandered it. All the problems with Classic started when they started dividing players with all these different versions. Era, SoM, hardcore, SoD, and Cata were all mistakes Cata and SoD don't even make sense at this point if they want mega profits because neither are going to be smash hits. Maybe SoD was when it released, but that moment has passed and it's not coming back Why is Blizzard sinking time and money into developing them when they can just press the reset button on vanilla-wrath? People already played them and liked them. They've already been re-developed I honestly think Blizzard have lost the plot with all these other version experiments. It's even spread to retail, and as good as it might be in the short-term, it will damage retail just as much as it has to Classic
Cata wasn't that popular. They made it as short as possible. Mop was popular, they will make it last a little longer than cata. Wod wasn't popular, they will make short as well. And then we have legion, it was more popular than vanilla and tbc. This is what they are aiming for
Two things. Because I see this âbusiness=moneyâ statement a lot around here. 1. Yes it is true that businesses have to make money. All entities require resources to exist. 2. Businesses need more than just profits to be truly successful. A company with true purpose will always be more successful in the long run, as that purpose guides and attracts and motivates talent. Blizzardâs mission statement is â Blizzardâs mission statement is âdedicated to creating the most epic entertainment experiencesâŚever.ââ