Blizzard announced the launch details for The Burning Crusade Classic. June 1st launch, May 18th pre-patch.
The weird/interesting part is this:
Before that, however, every hero must make a choice. Beginning on May 18, after each regional scheduled maintenance, the Burning Crusade Classic Pre-expansion Patch will be released, and each character must choose whether to advance onward to Burning Crusade, move to a Classic Era realm, or use the Character Clone service to play in both games.
I have to say that I don't really understand the purpose behind this. People have played Classic for a couple of years now. They've gone through all the phases of content. I rather imagine that most players are ready for something new.
So splitting the playerbase seems like a bad choice. The classic servers will probably be pretty empty. Classic is a numbers-intensive game. Maybe all the guilds that have 5 or so people left on a Classic server will band together, and be able to farm content.
If it was up to me, I would have done something like:
- All current Classic Realms advance to The Burning Crusade Classic.
- Six months later, open a handful of fresh Classic realms (maybe with #SomeChanges) and start the content release cycle over again.
The other contentious part is the Deluxe Edition for $70, which many people think is too much. For me, I've already discussed the issue in Cosmetic Versus Content Pricing. Expensive cosmetics and cheap content makes the game more accessible, but offends our sense of value.
In any case, I didn't get very far in Classic, maybe level 30 on one class. I'll probably give TBC Classic a whirl, maybe with a Blood Elf Paladin. I kind of expect to end up stopping at about 30 as well.
There is a "vanilla only" demographic out there in the forums who do not want to advance into BC. This is similar to the EverQuest situation, where there was a similar group that wanted an EQ server that would stay still in time.
ReplyDeleteIn the BlizzConline presentation/discussion about this Holly Longdale, who turned the EQ special server idea into a significant portion of their business, said that the vanilla Classic servers would be consolidated down to a smaller group of servers. I haven't seen further details on that, but I assume that remains the plan.
As for fresh vanilla servers, I expect that will come in the non-retail expansion year after we get WotLK Classic.
I just made that exact same prediction on Kaylriene's blog but for the reason that after WotLK comes Cataclysm and that's going to be a hard sell for progression. They'll need something to keep a lot of people on board while they wait for Pandaria. Of course, I don't really do WoW so maybe Cataclysm will be welcomed, now. Perceptions change over time.
DeleteYes, Wilhelm is right; it's not that big, but it is there. On the bright side, it's not hard to maintain a Classic only environment forever.
ReplyDeleteI'll likely clone my main, Cardwyn, and move a Pally over, but the rest will go with me into BC.
I've watched Everquest with their progression servers and it didn't seem to interesting. I'm way more invested in World of Warcraft though, so this all seems exciting. I'm back in Classic working mostly on my new Druid, but all of a sudden my other characters seem appealing as well. I'd almost say I can't imagine wanting to move your characters forward in time, but then I think of Cataclysm and I can imagine not wanting to go there. I wouldn't be able to resist, though. Fish on a hook.
ReplyDeleteNOT wanting to move them forward...zzzz.
ReplyDelete