We want progressive or not progressive servers?

[Hobospices]

Hi mates!

Imagine that: "Its a great day for all of us! Blizzard made an announcement during the night: LEGACY COMING SOON".

Great indeed. But we would have a big question: "Do we want progressive servers or not?" What is the best option? If we all agree about opening a legacy server, our community isnt sure enough about that question.

Mark Kern will meet Mike Morhaime in two weeks probably. On twitter, Mark said: "I'm doing polls for a few days to see how people feel about specific legacy issues. I will discuss these with Mike."
So, its time for us to discuss about these issues. I suggest you to create a Twitter account to answer this polls.

https://twitter.com/Grummz

So, what about a progressive server? I dont ask you what you prefer, but what is the best choice for everyone. We all know we want different things. There is players who wants Vanilla and nothing else. Some others TBC, WOTLK, and some players wants to play it succesively.

The problem with progressive servers would be that once TBC launched, there wouldnt be a Vanilla server anymore. And what about players who just want Vanilla? The same problem with Wotlk. And once Wotlk is over, should we continue and launch Cataclysm?...At least, we keep the community together. Unless the Vanilla community goes back on private server to play it.

We have another option, thanks to NostalriusBegins. We could copy our character from a Vanilla server to a TBC or Wotlk server. Then you have your 60 char on the Vanilla server, and the same 60 on the TBC server.
But, wouldnt it split the Legacy community? How to avoid an empty server? How Blizzard could be sure a Wotlk server would be used, or a Vanilla server once TBC launched? At least, with this solution, everyone is happy.

Furthermore, could we start a level 1 character on a TBC or WOTLK server, or should we start on the Vanilla server to be 60 (58?) and go on the TBC server? Then on the TBC / Wotlk server, there will be none character under the level 60? Isnt that a problem? Im just asking, I dont know.

The last possibility is to create at least 3 differents servers: 1 Vanilla, 1 TBC, 1 Wotlk, with no connections between them. But the "split problem" is much more important here.

What do you think? Once again, Im not asking you what do you prefer, like: "I just want to play vanilla, fu** TBC" Lets deeply think what is the best for the community.

I'd prefer a progression server, with patches installed in exactly the time frames they were originally installed in retail, with a possibility to transfer toons to the next xpac when released.

I'd also like to see the servers for the previous expansion reset after a certain amount of time - if the vanilla server is in the patch just prior to TBC, and TBC has been out for a year, maybe reset the vanilla server back to the original patch and wipe all toons. That way, everyone can experience vanilla from the first patch on, experience the AQ opening etc., even if they missed it the first time around.

Without periodic resets, some people will just be annoyed again that they never got to experience the AQ events, etc.

[EyeOfTruth]

Yeah vote for Progressive servers. What eventually open separate TBC server. When expansion is over/ new introduced, servers get reset to first patch.

Only problem with Vanilla/TBC reset is the toons. People have invested a lot of time to them. It can be draw back to some players. They don't see the point invest so much to something, when they know all their effort will get eventually erased - and for now, playing even costs.

But not reseting toons - It will make huge imbalance issues to server. Veteran players from past will dominate new comers. Only way I think out solution to this dilemma, is being able to keep your chars but you aren't able to equip later patch items before server is patched again to same stage with the item in question.

You can still transfer/ copy your character to next expansion server and thus use earlier expansion gear. This way it's possible to serve smooth playing experience to whole playing community. And keep re-playing value @ max in both servers.

This has other technical difficulties, but playing wise does not alter your/ others playing experience from original game.

[Naitguolf]

Why not reset-servers? This is how Diablo ladder works. And its pretty popular. For sure, that kind of stuff on a MMO might sound weird, but... ey, why not? So achievement can be really helpful here, in order to track on every ladder-reset what you did and how well was. Not really a fan at all on achievement, but...

Anyway, the most realistic scenary (at least to me) you can choose what server to connect, like the same way you can choose if you want to play on a PVP or PVE server. Then the same with Vanilla, tbc, Wotlk, etc.

[Tinkertown]

In any case there should be servers where you can stay in a forever vanilla environment and have your char left forever.

Reseting servers makes little to no sense, open up a new one instead. Call it a "current season" server if you prefer.

Time for TBC? Make a tbc server with copy from the vanilla realms.

Serverpop going down shouldn't be a huge issue if they start of with huge servers, nost style. Even if 75% of nost left it would still have a very healthy pop. In any case when the day comes mergers is far better than deleting the chars. It might well make sense to merge all "season 2" servers at some point after "season 3" starts and/or allow transfers to season 1 servers where you'd expect most vanilla affecionados to hang around if they arent playing the season.

[Uidrae]

I want vanilla.

A character copy/transfer option if TBC servers open would be nice but I don't want to lose the vanilla realm.

A transfer would move your toon off Vanilla and onto the BC server. A copy should leave your toon intact, while simply making a copy of it onto the BC realm (like on PTR). I could go for the latter.

[Drain]

They should only be progressive within their own content. There should be servers dedicated to each patch forever. Enough players would play on each to justify it. Just charge a sub to access the server list, then let people play on whatever they want. They'd all pay for themselves. There's players that prefer Classic, some that prefer BC, and even more that prefer Wotlk. If servers forcibly patch up at some point, a) that's what got us in this situation in the first place, and b) it screws over everyone eventually. Regardless of the patch you want, you should get it, as should everyone, and you should keep it, not ever lose it to a forced patch up.

This is how they should have run WoW from the start, and players such as myself tried to tell them to do it 10 years ago, and repeatedly over the years since. But they only cared about selling each box, so they wanted to force you to go up, again and again, so you'd have to buy each box to keep playing. They basically did not allow you to keep playing without doing so. They were not willing to listen to any reason, reason being that the sub for a few months is higher than a box, and 12M+Sub > 6M+boxes. They ran the game into the gutter and ran off all the players in order to mass sell boxes, a short term revenue, vs the sub, which is a long term revenue, that is higher after a few months. If they kept servers for every patch like we told them to do, they'd still have 12M today, and be making a hell of lot more money than selling each expansion does.

[melak]

progressive in the same way Nost did it.

[Wormwood]

What about Trump servers?

[800kdontknow]

. If servers forcibly patch up at some point, a) that's what got us in this situation in the first place, and b) it screws over everyone eventually. Regardless of the patch you want, you should get it, as should everyone, and you should keep it, not ever lose it to a forced patch up.

Who wants to lose years of effort even if it was fun?

[Naitguolf]

You dont lose anything. You enjoy the path. Besides you can see how fun is if playing on Diablo ladder. Probably is better if server reboots, and ladder characteres are moved into a non-ladder server. So everyone can play as they want. But probably, the most active player will play on ladder, to race to compete to first-kill, etc, also to enjoy a fresh start. But those things should came later. First, bring vanillas as was, then... who knows?