Q: What are the plans after Phase 6? More content for classic or moving to TBC?
A: We’ve done most of the hard work by bringing back 1.12 so progressing to Burning Crusade would be a lot easier for us. Our plan is to identify everything we need to do should we ever decide to go this route. We want to be sensitive to the desires of our players. Some may want BC and some may not. We’ll be following the Classic community closely to help determine what our next steps should be.

What do you guys think about this answer?

I really hope that if they go down the route of re-releasing TBC and WotLK that they do it on separate servers where you can copy your character, otherwise we'll just be in the same situation 10 years down the line where people are asking for Classic servers again!

It's also kinda funny that Classic isn't even released yet and people are asking what's coming next. :lol:

With ya on that one. Not gonna hang around if I have to play the game with any expansions. Those were the beginning of the end the first time around and I hope Blizz won't allow themselves to be doomed to repeat their same mistakes.

WHAT IF they recreate/re-release TBC but without a lot of the major changes. i.e Flying mounts. Imagine a Classic2 so to speak, new races, new balances. This will most likely not happen, but it's a cool idea.

I actually think this is the route their are thinking when they speak about TBC in Classic. They have mentioned several times when speaking about this about the classic philosophy and how TBC would fit in it. TBC without flying mounts is imposible because the expansion was created around the concept. They could develop TBC without the huge leap on gear and money, without dailies, with some relevant progresos around proffessions, without the huge immbalance around world pvp. Maybe classic + is just trying to fix the wrongs made in the past while staying true to the original concept.

Polling the community as with OSRS would be a nice way to find out what we want

Agree that copying and/or transferring your character to a separate TBC server would make the most sense. That way classic lovers can stay in classic WoW and TBC lovers can play on the TBC server.

Agree that copying and/or transferring your character to a separate TBC server would make the most sense. That way classic lovers can stay in classic WoW and TBC lovers can play on the TBC server.

This topic is a really hard one.. even Blizzard is clueless what to do next. They depend on the community's thoughts.. but we're not sure either.

Horns of Dilemma or like the Turkish saying; Staff with shit for both ends.

Chamouador's ideas are sublime!

GO CLASSIC +

TBC destroys Classic's legacy with flying. Sorry, but I don't want the horde scum flying over me while going to whichever hellhole they're going to. They should be on feet where they'll taste my sword.

They have the chance to turn Classic (+) into the best game of this century.

I’d absolutely love to see TBC and WoTLK servers! If they do it on separate servers without interfering with classic or anything then it’s totally ok. I even want Cataclysm and MoP servers (But those would be unpopular) eventually, perhaps 3-5 years down the road. I started in WoD, so I’d love to see even later expansions despite how unpopular they might be.

My ideal world is progressive release of seperate TBC and WOTLK servers. Nothing else needed after that imo. End it with the holy trinity of wow.

Q: What are the plans after Phase 6? More content for classic or moving to TBC?
A: We’ve done most of the hard work by bringing back 1.12 so progressing to Burning Crusade would be a lot easier for us. Our plan is to identify everything we need to do should we ever decide to go this route. We want to be sensitive to the desires of our players. Some may want BC and some may not. We’ll be following the Classic community closely to help determine what our next steps should be.its practically guaranteed to be separate servers

What do you guys think about this answer?

I really hope that if they go down the route of re-releasing TBC and WotLK that they do it on separate servers where you can copy your character, otherwise we'll just be in the same situation 10 years down the line where people are asking for Classic servers again!

It's also kinda funny that Classic isn't even released yet and people are asking what's coming next. :lol:

My ideal world is progressive release of seperate TBC and WOTLK servers. Nothing else needed after that imo. End it with the holy trinity of wow.

Im sorry but its not a holy trinity.
Bc followed in the design of classic wow.

But wrath did not. Wrath was the beginning of modern wow. Not the end of the old.

I'll support most reasonable variations of classic+. I kinda worry about ones that borrow TBC content, but I'd be more interested in, instead of using TBC content and tooling it for level 60, to actually use the OG, prototype of Outland and the Hellfire Citadel. There is some old chatter and scribblings by Blizzard that the Dark Portal was going to be open to Outland during Vanilla, but if you've seen the videos, it's different from TBC Outland.

I'd be down for that.

Of course this reworked/re-prototyped Outland would also be cool to see in the game along with: Grim Batol, Uldum (raid was the original intent, not a zone), Dragon Isles, some way to use the Hyjal zone, and then one of the earlier versions of Karazhan that got scrapped.

For Hyjal, maybe a world boss, rare spawns, and stuff. An extra rep and quest hub, like a prototype of Quel'Danas island, or just a less bad version of Silithus content.

Of these, Grim Batol and Kara could be 20 man raids, providing for a full 20 man raid progression path for a small guild.

But if we have to use TBC content, I'm in favor of keeping the level cap at 60 and the entire game being centered on a single progression path. Might see about re-tooling the Outland content in the world as people won't need to level. But there's so many TBC instances, I don't know how you'd manage the gear without just totally obliterating the existing vanilla gear, or at least obsoleting a lot of it.

And I'm less jazzed about the prospect of TBC servers. I feel like its a super safe, but boring option. If we only ever have this opportunity once, we might as well try out Classic+ content. If BC is so safe, and way easier for the devs to do, then that can be the fall-back plan.

My ideal world is progressive release of seperate TBC and WOTLK servers. Nothing else needed after that imo. End it with the holy trinity of wow.

Im sorry but its not a holy trinity.
Bc followed in the design of classic wow.

But wrath did not. Wrath was the beginning of modern wow. Not the end of the old.

And while I agree with that, let's also not ignore the glaring flaw of TBC: the obsoletion of all level 60 content in the game. All your progression is wiped out.

My ideal world is progressive release of seperate TBC and WOTLK servers. Nothing else needed after that imo. End it with the holy trinity of wow.

Im sorry but its not a holy trinity.
Bc followed in the design of classic wow.

But wrath did not. Wrath was the beginning of modern wow. Not the end of the old.

And while I agree with that, let's also not ignore the glaring flaw of TBC: the obsoletion of all level 60 content in the game. All your progression is wiped out.

Thats a flaw of expansions in general.

My ideal world is progressive release of seperate TBC and WOTLK servers. Nothing else needed after that imo. End it with the holy trinity of wow.

Im sorry but its not a holy trinity.
Bc followed in the design of classic wow.

But wrath did not. Wrath was the beginning of modern wow. Not the end of the old.

And while I agree with that, let's also not ignore the glaring flaw of TBC: the obsoletion of all level 60 content in the game. All your progression is wiped out.

Thats a flaw of expansions in general.

Not necessarily. Blizzard didn't have to raise the level cap. Back in the day, them raising the level cap was semi-controversial. Some players liked it, some didn't care, but some definitely hated it. And hated the idea of Blizzard "stealth resetting" everyone's character back to the same level of power.

My ideal world is progressive release of seperate TBC and WOTLK servers. Nothing else needed after that imo. End it with the holy trinity of wow.

Im sorry but its not a holy trinity.
Bc followed in the design of classic wow.

But wrath did not. Wrath was the beginning of modern wow. Not the end of the old.

And while I agree with that, let's also not ignore the glaring flaw of TBC: the obsoletion of all level 60 content in the game. All your progression is wiped out.

Thats a flaw of expansions in general.

Not necessarily. Blizzard didn't have to raise the level cap. Back in the day, them raising the level cap was semi-controversial. Some players liked it, some didn't care, but some definitely hated it. And hated the idea of Blizzard "stealth resetting" everyone's character back to the same level of power.

Let me rephrase. All existing expansions. As in what actually happened instead of hypothetical.

The idea of TBC excites me, but so does a patch 1.13.

With TBC, we know what we are getting. We know what the game will be like and what comes with it. I definitely enjoyed TBC.

However, a patch 1.13 is a really interesting idea. A new experience in Classic, made in the spirit of Classic—that's what I like to believe at least. The question is whether we can trust Blizzard to make such a patch, and how far they will take it in terms of quality-of-life, because I would personally not want to see any.

Just FYI, Classic already is named patch 1.13. The Blizzcon demo was 1.13, and the closed beta was on a 1.13.2 client. We're currently on 13.2.31446

If classic is even remotely successfull (Which I think we all here believe it will be), I cannot see a world where blizzard doesn't release TBC and Wrath.

I wouldn't be opposed to it as long as classic servers remain. Always have a free one way character transfer from vanilla to TBC and TBC to Wrath between the servers. This way, you can progress through history at your own pace. (No going backwards, do to leveling getting consistantly easier over time)

Classic+ is my prefered route, of course AFTER NAX has been released for many months.

My Buddies and I have been talking about classic+ changes we would like to see the following be the first "Classic+ Content Patch":
1. Remove debuff limit and rebalance boss encounters to maintain same difficulty after debuff limit remove.
This would allow for more varience in play styles and raid comp. Afflic Lock now relevant. I'm very interested to see how competitive feral druid will be now that they can maintain 2x bleeds at all times, etc. I think it is important to maintain difficultly level, allowing unlimited debuffs or drastically increasing them, would make fights easier, so rebalancing content will be required.

2. Implement pally taunt
Give pally a nice long ass class quest at lvl 30 class quest or somthing that takes them into everything undead and at the end grant them https://www.wowhead.com/spell=31789/righteous-defense
It was orriginally planned as vanilla content and they just never got around to doing it pre-tbc. Im not sure how Horde would like this, as they wouldn't really get an equivilent boon to their faction.

3. Implement a variety of new items lvl 1-52 itemized for various off specs. (*Give gear items to under itemized specs)
Not better loot, not more powerful loot, just different loot. I would like to see better itemization for those under itemized specs. Give some more variety to leveling. Smite priest? + holy damage cloth gear is available for you. Boomkin leveling? Sure... Elemental shaman leveling? Yup. The goal here is to just bring the other specs to be on par with the classes current designated leveling spec. (Shadow, Feral, Enhance...)

4. Impliment additional T1 and T2 and T3 gear items into the current raids for class off specs. (Currently only 1 tiered set per class, this would impliment the TBC model of 1 tier set per class per spec.)
Not sure if I like the gear token thing from TBC or not. I like the fact that the boss drops specific pieces of gear, on the other hand, 3x sets per class would mean getting any one piece of gear would be even more difficult. I do know that I like having gear for each spec. Once again, the goal here is not to make people more powerfull, but to offer class balance and more raid composition varriety. I think most class/spec issues in vanilla are not due to talents or spells, but because gear for the spec doesnt exist.

In the gearing, for both points 3 and 4, I want to ensure the slide to a unified "Spell Power" is avoided. Also, I don't want to change the theory of thought between "Pure DPS" classes and "Hybrid Classes". I personally think DPS warriors are too OP as is given their optimal for tank, and that they should get their damage output nerfed somehow. I think multi function classes should be viable for damage, but not nessecarily equal to pure dps classes. All things the same (Gear, Consules, Competency), I think Hybrid classes should ~85-90% the damage output. Putting a great Ele shaman or a great feral druid at about the damage output as an OK mage. But a great mage will still come out on top. At this damage level though, no reason to avoid them in the raids. Ideally, The gearing changes are not ment to make all classes even, and not even more powerfull, just make all specs viable for both leveling, raiding, and pvp. I think gear itemization alone can mostly accomplish that.

I personally would like to see this done ~3 months after NAX release. This means no new content, NAX is still the ultimate end goal, which gives people more time to get through the content, but at the same time, it introduces 'new content' and reasons to level up alts, roll new specs, etc. Essentially its an easy way to work towrds better balance.

I'm definitely in the separate servers camp. I'd be interested in both TBC and WotLK personally. I've often wondered why Blizzard is so keen to let everyone see the raid content via LFR etc when they regularly invalidate all old content with new expansions. I'd like to be able to play whichever expansion I like as they are all essentially different games. That said, I don't find it particularly feasible to split it further.

I would likely also be more interested in Classic+ over new retail expansions.

The Burning Crusade is nostalgia and not what we need. Sit in Shattrah with the enemy faction. Dead rivalry. Stuck on a 7 zone continent you can fly over in a few minutes. Many forgettable zones. We got Nagrand again in WoD? Did anyone care, no. Draenor was Outland. Earn raid gear that is mostly useless in PvP. Resilience. Arena is rampant with restodruid/sl lock cancer. All the meta comps are known. Eye of the storm, god no. Dungeons that split into 4 wings ,and visually blend together. Dungeon boss fights and gear drops that few remember. Badge gear. Daily quests on a single island that replace farming in the world. Dranei. Nobody cares about them. Blood elves do not belong on the Horde whatsoever. Horde Paladins and Alliance Shaman. Dead lore. They eviscerated the WC3 story, turning the main characters into whiney loot pinatas.

WoTLK is even worse. Wotlk is like a totally different MMO altogether. The expansions ruined WoW due to Blizzard's shortsightedness. Blizzard felt they wielded the power to redesign the genre. Instead they destroyed it. The real solution is to follow the path that Cataclysm took. Add new zones to Azeroth. Add new races and starting areas. Add challenging 5 man dungeon content. Add new Raids. Add a seasonal ranking system for World PvP and PvE. You need vertical progression to some extent.

TBC or fresh new original content? Oldschool Runescape actually created brand new content specifically for their Oldschool iteration and have found success in doing so. I'm one to believe that branching off into an original, novel path will bring unexpected success. Of course, I would expect whatever they do moving forward to be on their own servers to keep the WoW Classic experience isolated.

I like TBC except for flying mounts. HUGE dealbreaker for me

Add my vote for TBC+. I loved TBC but there was a lot it did wrong: flying mounts, invalidating Naxx gear with greens, the token system, Horde paladins and Alliance shamans, etc. It would take a lot of work to fix these things but unlike Classic+ they won't be starting from nothing.

Pipe dreams aside I believe they'll either do regular TBC as a safe choice or no expansion at all and try to funnel people over to retail. I've heard rumors that they aren't keen on having two MMOs with two dev teams, and many TBC fans won't agree that my above list needs to be fixed. Between the two MMOs retail stands to get them more profit from all the scummy MTX it's packing; suits at Activision will smell the money and ignore the passion, as they always do.