WoW Classic Era Truly is a Closed System

In what comes as a shock to absolutely nobody, the purely Hardcore WoW Classic Era servers have been abandoned in favor of the Season of Discovery servers.

Wow. They were High and Full only
two months ago.

I got on the HC server I've used in the past only to find almost nobody there. I knew that the "regular" WoW Classic Era servers had taken a bit of a hit, but I thought the HC servers would be more immune than this because, well, I figured HC would have it's own separate appeal.

Silly me, I know.

This is the current population for
"regular" Classic Era. There's another
PvP cluster off screen that's "Medium".

It does seem to me that the current population of Classic Era is pretty much one cohesive unit, and that population is distributed among the three types of servers. Right now the bulk of the population is in the Season of Discovery servers, as that's the new hotness, but when people tire of that they'll likely come back to the regular Era servers (and to a lesser extent the HC servers). 

One thing I don't see much of is people splitting time between Era servers and Wrath Classic or Retail servers. I'm sure that exists, just not to the extent that you see evidence of it a lot.

Looking at my own server logins, I'd say that once my 10 person raid team for Wrath Classic fell apart at the beginning of 2023, about 90% of my time has been spent in a Classic Era server of one form or another. The rest of the time is probably 8% Wrath Classic and 2% Retail: most of that 8% happened before I created Era characters, and that 2% worth of Retail logins is due to me getting screenshots for the blog.

I most definitely spent a lot more time in SWTOR and LOTRO than Wrath Classic and Retail WoW this past year. 

***

Going forward, I'm most interested in what will happen to the Wrath Classic crowd once Cataclysm Classic releases. What will the majority of players do?

1. Move on to Cata Classic
2. Go back to an Era realm
3. Migrate to Retail WoW
4. Leave WoW altogether

I don't really have an answer here, but my first guess is not #1. Maybe inertia will mean that #1 will win out, but my gut says no. The snark in me wants to say #4 given that it certainly seems that killing Arthas has been a goal of a lot of people, but I think we'll have a better feel for what might happen in the Spring when Wrath Classic has just about finished. The ramp up to Wrath Classic itself began organically months before the release date, and if we don't see a similar wave of interest in the months prior to release of Cata Classic, it's more likely that Cata Classic will be a dud. 

What do you think?

Death Comes for the Unwary

I seem to have a mental block.

I start a toon on a Classic WoW Hardcore Server, get past the initial wave of potential deaths, and...

Ouch.

Deathwyn Mk. 1 and Mk. 3 died on the same mobs, the middle of the pack Defias, at Level 14 and 13 respectively.*

After a day of stewing in my own juices, I decided to create Deathwyn Mk. 4, and she very nearly died early because I was being stupid and jumped down to where a lone Kobold was, only to suddenly find myself surrounded by respawns. At that point I just bailed and ran away, not caring about the loot that potentially dropped.**

But that's the thing: at L13 through L15 I believe something clicks on in my head saying, "You've got this, you know what to do, and you can run away easily if need be. Relax a bit..."

That's bad news.

The Hardcore Challenge servers are a bit different than regular servers for one big reason: the respawns are SO FAST. That makes normal questing fraught with danger, and given that you have only one life, you have to treat every attack as if it might be your last. 

I need to play more conservatively, take fewer risks, and acknowledge that in HC servers just surviving is a victory. Maybe once I can get to L20 I can start to relax a bit, but you never know.

*Deathwyn Mk. 2 died to a murloc at L9 because I'd kill it, it would immediately respawn and attack, and I eventually ran out of both health potions and mana. After about the fourth respawn I was surrounded by other respawns and I was saying out loud "YOU HAVE GOT TO BE SHITTING ME!"

**When I managed to come back a bit later, I discovered it was a 6 slot bag. Woo hoo!

A Side-Eye at 4Chan Rumors

I'm not exactly a fan of 4Chan.

Okay, that's not news; the few times I've ever been over there I've come out of that place and felt like I needed a shower, not to mention a full AV system scan of my PC*.

That being said, someone claiming to be a Blizzard insider posted some "leaks", and it was quickly picked up and distributed via Reddit:

You'll have to click on this and get to the original
if you want to be able to read it.
From Reddit (and, you know, that place).

Some of this appears to me to be blatantly false.

I mean, the whole "Cataclysm Classic is not in the works" is not the case. The surveys that Blizz put out --and I'm one of the recipients about 9 months ago-- all indicated that Cataclysm Classic was a done deal. There were no options in the survey I received to say "I'm not playing Cata Classic". It was all about "what features did you like in Cataclysm that you're looking forward to in Cata Classic". One of the items, interestingly enough, that wasn't even an option was "the World revamp". I kind of expected that to at least be there, but I was surprised when that wasn't even on the list of items to look forward to.

Another item that I consider to be false is the interest that Microsoft has in "breaking up Blizzard". Now, I would totally agree with Microsoft deciding to move toward a more work-from-home environment and selling off some of Blizzard's high cost property in California, but breaking them up completely? I don't think we're at that point yet. I could see Diablo Immortal (or is that Immoral?) being moved over to King, because it's a mobile title and it should go to the mobile studio, but Blizzard's classic properties will, for the near future, stay within the Blizzard house. Judging by how Microsoft has handled Zenimax, as in "they didn't touch it at all", I presume they'll do the same for Activision Blizzard. At least at first.

That being said, some of these assertions do ring true. 

The most obvious one to me, and probably drives certain Retail purists nuts**, is that "WoW Classic has moder [sp] players than Retail World of Warcraft right now."

I mean, duh. Between Hardcore Challenge servers --which are always full-- and the steady play of people in Era and Wrath Classic, Retail's appeal is to a smaller slice of the overall WoW pie. 

Another item I find to be (mostly) true is the assertion that "Dragonflight is the remains of a cancelled mobile game co produced with chinese [sp] partners that was bolted onto World of Warcraft to pad a massive gap after the catastrophic response to patch 9.1. This lead to a ship [sp?] in tone that the players have noticed and found off putting." Oh, not that all of Dragonflight is from a mobile game, but that the Dragonriding portion is. Given how much promotion that Dragonriding has gotten --and continues to get-- it's pretty obvious it's a core part of Retail's experience right now. If you told me that the Crafting Orders system is also from a WoW themed mobile game, I'd believe that one as well. I could easily see a WoW Dragonriding mobile game, with Crafting Orders being a way to "improve" your dragon and provide an impetus for microtransactions. As for the change in tone, well... people have been complaining about the ever increasing power of the "big bads" in Retail WoW, and Dragonflight (at least at first) seemed like a bit of a soft reset in that area. If the Retail community in general is conditioned to fight "the big bad that the previous big bad was scared of", then Dragonflight definitely can be off-putting. 

But hey, if nothing else, this little kernel of.... something.... from 4Chan got me interested enough to post about it.

*I would set it up and let it run overnight and check in the morning.

**I'm pretty sure that if I say his name three times, like Beetlejuice, he'll appear and tell me that I'm an idiot for liking an old version of the game. So, I'm going to keep my mouth shut in that regard. At least Gevlon won't suddenly appear and rain on everybody's parade, since we're all slackers to him.

Sunday Musings on the WoW Hardcore Servers

After having spewed out content on a daily basis in August*, I took this week off. 

Work had something to do with it as well, since I have some big meetings coming up and with yet another new platterful of stuff to work on.

Still, thoughts about games and whatnot haven't been too far from my mind. 

Mainly, what do I think of the Hardcore WoW servers?

***

Okay, let me get this out of the way early: I have already made peace with the likelihood that my toon is going to die. I mean, I even named her Deathwyn and instead of long black hair she has short blonde hair. The polar opposite of ol' Card.

There ya' go. Same blue eyes, tho.

The playstyle is exactly as it was for Vanilla Classic and Classic Era, so me playing on Era servers for the past 8+ months it has been a smooth transition.

But beyond that, I play like I did when I first played on Stormscale-US all those years ago.

In a nutshell, I play in a similar fashion to how I've always done, but since Stormscale was a PvP server I learned very early to have my head on a swivel and always take into account any and all potential threats.

See a bear waaay over there? I'm killing that before I attack the mobs I was here to kill. I'm not taking any chances. 

In a normal situation, I might just kind of wing it until said bear is a bit closer, but I'm not messing around on the Hardcore servers. In the same way as what I learned during my first exposure in Hillsbrad on a PvP server, you can't take anything for granted.

I'm already looking ahead to what instances might look like.

Normally, as an Alliance player, I'd expect to enter into the Deadmines as maybe L18 or L19. I'd even accept grouping up with an L17 as long as they knew to not overpull; several months ago when Era Cardwyn was starting out, we even took an L14 and got most of the way through until we got to the boat**.

On these Hardcore servers, I think L21-22 minimum is a safer bet for everyone involved. And if someone wants to be an idiot and take a severely underleveled toon into that place, go ahead. I'm not coming along.

And I'm fine with that.

To be honest, I can get away with that because a lot of the decent gear a leveling Frost Mage has are the items that they can make via Tailoring.

I'm used to playing conservatively, so Hardcore servers just make me slow down even more. And I don't even bother with baddies like murloc packs or gnolls in Westfall because I know that 2-3 coming after me is a recipe for death, so it's much smarter for me to relax, pull back, and make like predators on the Serengeti: hit the isolated and weak ones.

Outside of that mental adjustment, the vibe from the HC servers isn't as bad as it was when the Hardcore Challenge was merely an app. Sure, it can get crowded, but it's not terrible. (The phasing has helped a ton with this.) And without people being able to run boosts and whatnot --or try to do anything vaguely resembling a GDKP run*** there's a dearth of bots and whatnot. Those few bots I've seen out in the wild --they tend to have junk names that don't mean anything at all-- have died pretty early in the leveling process. 

One thing that hasn't changed: the idiotic arguments in Trade Chat.

For example, I left Stormwind the second day I logged in because people were arguing over what shorthand to call Dire Maul versus The Deadmines. Both can use DM, hence the bitching, but as I pointed out before I left there's probably only a handful of people on the Hardcore servers who could even enter into Dire Maul, so there's absolutely no reason to fight when for 99% of Hardcore Server players Dire Maul isn't even an option.

So, not everything is hunky dory in Hardcore land, but that's fine. It's an engaging diversion from when I'm playing Era, but not something I'm going to go all in on. 

I think.

Oh, and I'd be remiss if I didn't give a shout out to Atheren, who managed to track me down already on Skull Rock-US and send me some Health Potions and some bags. They have been much appreciated, even though I've been mainly stockpiling the potions for emergencies.

*One day I missed because I miscounted and thought I'd already posted, but I made up for it by posting twice in the next day.

**Said L14 told us "they were almost L15", but after not leveling through the entire Deadmines instance I was calling "bullshit" about that to my questing buddy. As proof, when Card was high enough she helped out some friends through Deadmines and all of them leveled at least once during the instance run.

***For the uninitiated, all raid participants have to have a certain amount of gold on their person --you have to have proof before you're invited to the raid-- and have to bid in gold for items that drop. This is apparently the "meta" on Wrath Classic servers these days, and on large servers such as Atiesh-US that has colored everybody's approach to the game. If you want to pug things, you'd better be able to buy gold or you have to put up with the gatekeeping on 5-person instances if you want to do group content. On smaller servers --such as what Old Blanchy-US or Bloodsail Buccaneers-US are-- the culture is different, so it's not as bad there. But for me, I don't feel like giving Blizz money for the privilege of avoiding the mess they helped to create. I've said this before, but in the off chance you missed it, there ya go. And to be fair, I had a hard stop on Wrath Classic servers anyway, because Cataclysm Classic will be coming next year. 

EtA: Corrected grammatical errors.