"No, it's not," I replied. "The old one was totally random; you were selected automatically and spat out with a group. This one, you control who you select." I didn't even mention the Battlegroup part (thanks again for the reminder, Shintar), but I was ready in case someone decided to try to counter me.
Nobody did; in a rare case of me actually "winning" an argument online, I actually had the last word.
Of course, this argument didn't come out of nowhere, as people were arguing about "When WoW started going downhill." Some said Cataclysm, others said "That Panda expansion, Mists."
It all depended upon whether they were talking about subscriber numbers or whether the game no longer felt like the game, I guess, but my belief that the seeds of WoW's downfall were already sown by the time Cataclysm came along and blew up the Old World is irrelevant to this crowd.
This discussion was a constant reminder that the majority of people who play the game aren't very interested in the broader scope of WoW itself, but rather "What is important now?"
And for most people, it's Raiding with Arenas as a distant second, with an occasional nod to Dungeons, Dailies, and the Auction House.
***
This brings to mind something that I've been pondering lately: what is my personal endgame for WoW? I don't mean raiding per se, even though I'm not doing it anymore, but what happens to me after Wrath Classic is over?
I suspect that the Classic Team are going to go all in on Cataclysm Classic, but whether that means no Wrath Era servers is somewhat unclear. I've read scuttlebutt that implies the splitting off of Classic Era from TBC Classic servers was such a pain in the ass that the Classic Team doesn't want to do that again, so that likely means there will be no Wrath Era servers in perpetuity.
So... What then?
I'm thinking that if I still play WoW Classic, maybe a return to Classic Era servers is a good idea. It's a known item, and I took advantage of the $5 (or whatever it was) transfer before it ended to move more toons' Era versions into place. While Classic Era may no longer be "progressing" if an old game can be said to be progressing, As Shintar has point out on numerous occasions the original Vanilla WoW experience just felt to be a perfect leveling cadence. I certainly discovered that myself in the Season of Mastery servers, where my leveling was so fast I was unable to train properly due to the lack of gold.
But, there's another option, floated by YouTuber Nixxiom in this video:
One thing that the WoW Private Servers do that Blizzard has so far been unwilling to do has been to "break" WoW. By that, I mean break the internal game design and go with servers with all sorts of quirks.
Things such as "Classless WoW", where there are no classes and how you develop your toon depends on what you find interesting. In this respect, it's a bit like how Elder Scrolls Online allows you to tweak your player with as much or little magical ability as you see fit. My own Nightblade on ESO has a healthy dose of magical abilities, because I went all in on those talent trees. However, she is still recognizably a Nightblade (aka Rogue) because ESO hasn't exactly crossed that "classless" threshold.
But a WoW Private Server has.*
There's a constant low level drumbeat for "Classic Plus", which is new content that is NOT TBC or other expansions but built upon the Vanilla WoW environment. New content and zones based purely in the Old World.
Such as Turtle WoW.
What Nixxiom suggests, and I think he might be closer to the mark than you might believe, is that the reason why some of these Private Servers haven't been shut down by a litigious Blizzard is that the WoW Dev Team likely plays on some of these servers.
But still, Nixxiom also further suggests something truly radical: provide for a fee --monthly or whatever-- a team to have access to Vanilla WoW and a set of development tools so that a team can rent server space from Blizzard and tweak WoW to their hearts' content. To put it succinctly, use the Minecraft model for WoW Classic.
I am truly intrigued by this idea. Not that I'd be able to do this myself --I'm not made of money, so I couldn't pull this off-- but going all in on official support for WoW Private Servers would be extremely exciting. It would reinvigorate the WoW community in a way that WoW Classic itself did in 2019. Like the OGL that Wizards of the Coast originally introduced with D&D 3e**, it would unleash the creativity of the greater community on the game they love.
There's just one thing that would likely prevent Blizzard from going this route: they'd lose control of the narrative for Retail.
Admittedly, as my experiences in WoW Classic have reminded me, a sizable portion of WoW players don't give a crap about the narrative at all, they just want a raid to beat. But still, Blizzard very jealously protects the WoW narrative, and having more people go off and play Private Servers --ones with an Imprimatur or not-- means that their "one true way" of the WoW narrative would get diluted. Especially if more people play those servers than the Blizzard official ones.
That alone would likely prevent Blizzard from actually creating a "Vanilla WoW Toolkit" for anybody to use, but hey, a body can dream.
*Not sure how long that link will be valid, because it's for a private server, but hey...
**And they recently tried --and failed-- to kill off because of corporate greed. I could have provided about a dozen YouTube video links to this whole brouhaha, but Dungeon Craft's "We won!" video works.
What about your friends? I thought you agreed to stick together? Or does that not extend into whatever comes after Wrath?
ReplyDeleteThe mundane reason why many private servers haven't been shut down isn't that Blizzard hasn't tried but that they are hosted in places where people don't care about getting cease and desist letters from the US and where Blizzard can't easily litigate.
Also ultimately most of these servers are small fry to Blizz and not that important. Nost with its 10k concurrent players at its peak was very much an outlier. I don't think there's that much demand for "WoW assets remodelled into a completely different game" either, because why not just play a different game then?
And yeah, I don't think Blizzard would ever approve anything like that out of pride in their brand alone. I don't remember where I got it from, but from what I recall one of the reasons that contributed to them never adding proper housing was that they were already worried about people doing "off brand" things even with simple tools that would allow things like placing pre-made furniture. Never mind letting people play with the whole dev kit...
My questing buddy doesn't know what she's going to do after Wrath is over either. She started playing originally in late-Wrath, and Cataclysm was her first full experience. As far as Myzrael-US goes, we've already had a long discussion and decided to migrate to Old Blanchy-US since it's a) free and b) a large enough population that doesn't seem to have as many try-hards as Atiesh-US.
DeleteShe's also gotten into an Ulduar raid the past couple of weeks, and that raid really likes her healing, so I think she's going to stick with them. I've been telling her she does a great job healing, and it's only the really hardcore that think she "isn't quite good enough". So hopefully this will build up her confidence a bit about how good she really is at it.
I will say that I've checked out Turtle WoW and I could seriously get behind High Elves and Goblins introduced the way they have in their version of WoW. As far as population goes, their server pop is roughly that of Old Blanchy-US right now, which is what Myzrael-US was back in Vanilla Classic. Not too shabby overall. I recognize that the quality of the work will be up and down, but there's enough players out there to make the server pretty viable.
If nothing else, Blizzard's pride may yet be their own downfall.