I understand your concerns about the vertical progression that happens with every expansion of the game, it’s a valid concern that I don’t agree with either. It’s not something I’m looking forward to, but my lack of interest in TBC and future expansions also comes from other aspects.
For example, TBC gives you flying mounts, I don’t think that was ever a good idea and I think it destroys immersion with the world and separates players to “flying players” and “ground players”, makes the world more empty and the way you reach from point A to point B is made more stupid and meaningless, as in how you don’t need to avoid mobs or learn the map for the fastest way anymore.
The other thing I don’t like is the addition of new continents that also segregates players, because the old continents Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms are no longer the central hub of the game and world, everyone is in the rat race trying to move to the new cool place and I don’t like that either. It’s another design problem that more or less ruins the game.
The third thing is that they give Shaman to the Alliance and Paladin to the Horde, I’ve always argued that those classes that are faction-specific increase faction identity and makes both the classes and factions feel more exclusive, special and unique. In fact, I always suggested on Turtle WoW that they should invent new faction-specific classes to enforce that formula further.
I can see you have played Diablo 2 more than I have, when I started, it was already on patch 1.10 LoD and I’m used to that, I haven’t encountered the issues you speak of, but I think they are absolutely valid. It’s a problem with Blizzard games - they start great, but over time become more anti-consumer due to these practices that come from vertical progression. I think this stems from the games being viewed by the studio as something like a gambling product that needs to keep people hooked for as long as possible, it’s another reason why I think it shouldn’t happen.
But what you suggest as a way to approach TBC on this server also comes with an issue - currently the server doesn’t have 40 concurrent players, at least I haven’t seen it yet and to segregate them even further on two separate servers will absolutely kill the server. There needs to be unity to keep the players together as much as possible. Outland separates them once from Azeroth, TBC separates them a second time from Vanilla, so I can only see this as a bad idea. It can work if the server had 800-1600 daily concurrent players, but even so I wouldn’t be happy with it, if the developer intends to do it or the majority of players vote for it, I have no reason to be unhappy with the verdict, but I will not be interested in playing the server anymore.
What I think the developer should do is focus on the unity of players and to foster a community that is small but tightly-knit. I think the server already being PvE is a good start to keep things calm and safe. Maybe I’m biased in what I’m going to say next, but I spent a lot of years on Turtle WoW - from 2018 to 2026 and I came to really enjoy and appreciate the Vanilla Plus aspect of it. I think that if this server makes small changes to the game in this aspect, it can improve the game substantially, again, people might not agree with it, they may prefer Pure Vanilla and that’s fine, but learning from how Turtle WoW started - you can chat with the other faction and you can group up with the opposite faction to do group content together were solutions to the server having a population of 50-100 players at launch and people appreciated that and it became a pivotal aspect of it. They also changed some class talents to make more builds more viable and this can be another aspect that can be explored.
Again, I’m not demanding anything, just sharing my opinion and that’s it. The server can very well remain Pure Vanilla, it can update to TBC, I have no control over it and I’m not looking for that, I’m just brainstorming possible ways that have been tried and tested in the past and helped a server to grow and to remain a tight-knit community. So far this server has only a few things going for itself:
1.Pure Vanilla
2.No P2W
3.PvE
4.x1 XP rate
5.Being small and niche can keep it away from Blizzard’s eyes
But I think in the long run some other things can be explored to make it grow. Unless, that is, the developer is perfectly happy with how things are right now and that’s fine, I cannot argue with that either, I’m just a player and the owner is the boss who does what they think is best for the server.
And finally, regarding the cookie cutter builds in TBC, I think the same applies to Vanilla too - each class has a handful of specs that are viable and people are min/maxing and going for that. If you play a Mage, Frost is the best way to go and doing anything else is not only not viable, but it can make things more difficult to you. I remember Turtle WoW making an Arcane Mage a viable build that was interesting and different for people who were bored with the same old treadmill.
