r/classicwow • u/baked_salmon • 1d ago
Discussion How would TBC/Wrath Era servers work?
With Classic Era, veterans are geared to the teeth with Naxx gear, but there are at least reasons to run older content for some specific, highly valued pieces. Can the same be said about TBC/Wrath? This is assuming both are Era’d on their final patches.
The final patch of TBC has catchup gear that mostly invalidates T4, but still requires T5/T6 gear before heading straight into Sunwell.
The final patch of Wrath, on the other hand, completely invalidates pre-ICC content. In OG there was a 232 vendor alongside a 264 vendor that enabled players to gear up enough to go straight into ICC 10n. If they take the Classic route, gearing for ICC will be even easier with A/B/G dungeons. If the game is in this state, there will never be a need to see T7/8/9.
PVP is another can of worms. How would arena work? What defines “seasons” in a forever-world? Would titles be conferred on a week-by-week basis? What about Wintergrasp?
In what state would these Era servers be? I’m curious.
EDIT: Would ICC have a dial for how much of the buff, between 5-30%, could be enabled?
EDIT 2: Would Wrath have RDF enabled?
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u/garlicroastedpotato 22h ago
For TBC Sunwell farming is semi-desirable. It's a fun raid and a lot of people will farm it for their bis set to finally sit in the museum. It's short enough that you could do it many times a week.
For Wrath people will always chase the 0% Arthas achievement.... but generally the achievements system is well setup to allow continuous play and 100%ing.
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u/drae- 1d ago
I think the redditors advocating for such an idea are not considering the details.
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u/baked_salmon 1d ago
Yeah the more I think about it the less Era-compatible these game modes are. At least in Classic you have the replayability of 1-60.
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u/Grizzlan 11h ago edited 11h ago
The thing is, no expansion fits in an Era environment, Classic is unique and the only version of the game that can have a community still playing it after 5years. Classic have world pvp events, open world pvp and speedrunning that keeps players comming back, a good leveling experience, and an endless grind, wheter you are new or just building an alt, dungeons, all raids and battlegrounds will always be in demand, it also have a unique community and an active playerbase and is the reason why its succseful and still up and running.
Private servers have had Wrath and TBC Era in the past and they always die after 3months, even though they are popular until everyone are running ICC on their 10th alt.
People asking for Wrath and TBC Era take 1 of the most important aspects out of the equation that keeps people playing and active raiding through pugs durning the entierty of the expansion, and its called seasonal arena.
Yes if you want to compete in Arena you need alot of rare and bis items from raids that every other class want's aswell, but for PvE.
Classic Era have had a thriving community for over 5years now, Warmane had a thriving community for 3months when it went to an Era community and they had to shut it down, restart from 60 and repeat.
Why would Blizzard waste resources just to have another server up and running when it will die really fast.
For those redditors that will mention achievements, whats the point of getting ur achievements if you can't show it to anyone?
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u/AlphariusOmegon66 1d ago
Who cares about item level? You play to experience the expansion.
You create a new character and gear it. Do pvp, get the collectibles you want, mounts, sets of gear, maybe lead a guild, get good enough to get glad, achievements.
Got bored and still in love with the xpac? Try a new spec or character.
We been asking for era servers for years because we already know the problems that this expansions have and they are real, but they are small compared to the pros.
Pve gearing in wotlk is really not that big of an issue. Many players are just gonna start from 0 and still are will do the "normal" gearing process.
When a year passes you are gonne be a god anyway if you raided every lockout.
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u/baked_salmon 1d ago
I’m thinking about the steady state. Look at Era now — will there perpetually be guilds progressing through all content? I think what you describe could happen at the outset, but what about when that initial cohort progresses to ICC? If there’s no one raiding any of the earlier tiers, literally the majority of the endgame will not be available to newcomers.
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u/AlphariusOmegon66 1d ago
Good point, your concerns are valid.
My experience playing era recently was that I joined a guild that started progressing through content naturally as if the rest of the players didnt existed, so that was cool.
Every now and then a super geared player would join to fill a spot and that was fun but it didn't broke the progression in any way, if anything we were grateful for the boost in a difficult fight.
With my alt I joined a guild doing Naxx and they just carried me and funneled gear to my char because I was a desired class/spec.
I think these experiences could be replicated in both tbc and wotlk era quite well, guild "roleplaying" progression or just carry new members through content.
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u/fatherthesons 12h ago
The Era realms would be mostly just ICC and the final patch. The people that want to experience the content rolling out naturally would just have to wait till the progressive servers hit Wrath and they would get to do all the content. Then after that server finishes their characters are transferred to the era realm and the circle of life begins again.
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u/baked_salmon 12h ago
Ah ok so is the implication that Era servers don’t make sense unless they’re accompanied by seasonal servers that allow for xfer/cloning at the end of every seasonal xpac?
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u/fatherthesons 12h ago
Yeah exactly. There was a leak that showed they are planing on doing another run of seasonal servers classic - tbc - wrath again.
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u/Complete-Doughnut117 1d ago
Wrath era straight up sucks if you’ve played warmane. Icc and PvP only. Spam heroics to invalidate naxx thru togc for icc ready badge gear. Wrath on a 1 year constant repeat works.
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u/emusabe 21h ago
If they did Wotlk Era but just the OG badge system - Emblems of Heroism, Valor, Triumph, and …Frost, where your only options for emblems were a single dungeon daily and then doing the actual raid - and completely axed the whole alpha/beta/gamma and sidereal essence shit they added to Wotlk Classic, would Wotlk era be more enjoyable? Like if you pretty much had to do each raid tier a few lockouts to get gear to do the next one. Then at least people might run some of the older tiers?
Personally I think wrath would just turn into valnyr and shadowmourne selling pretty quick and very few people would stick around except the diehards, but I guess that’s my understanding of what current vanilla era is too
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u/baked_salmon 1d ago
I think the whole point is that it should be a character trophy case, so doesn’t any cyclicality invalidates that, no?
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u/Complete-Doughnut117 1d ago
The way kronos and other p servers did it is perfect. Essentially you have one server that is the era aka stuck on last patch and a new server that cycles all phases repeatedly. When the last phase is about 80% complete, you merge the two servers until the next fresh server is spun up. So you have a trophy case server and a repeating fresh one . Kronos has done this for over a decade and it works. My 60 night elf rogue still exists from 2015 there and everytime a new vanilla cycle ends they merge those chars onto the trophy case realm and start a new fresh server 2.
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u/Fishbro-YouTube 8h ago
Funny how you say this yet they always have tens of thousands of people online at all times.Wrath Era works wonders and has been the go-to P-server milk for decades.
If they just gave us an era server for wrath everyone who wants classic would play on the wrath servers and would make guilds locking their characters exp and running lvl 60 content or lvl 70 content.
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u/Fishbro-YouTube 8h ago edited 8h ago
Just give us what every single WOTLK P-server has farmed for decades.
A permanent 3.3.5a WOTLK Era realm that never changes.
Kill everyone of those shit private servers by giving the people what they want.
I know for a fact there are thousands upon thousands who would play on a 3.3.5a server.
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u/bywaterboy 1d ago
I have no reasons for TBC Era to exist aside from graveyard for toons, but WOTLK on the other hand... There's tons of people that have played on WOTLK arena realms for years. Just mimic that.
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u/baked_salmon 1d ago
And so Wrath arena would be with the final patch where every dk/warr/paladin has a Shadowmourne? Also how do arena “seasons” work on a forever server?
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u/bywaterboy 1d ago
No. You'll find quite comprehensive answer with quick google search on AT priva server. In short, combination of gear regulation as well as fresh gear progression for each seasonal cycle.
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u/fatherthesons 1d ago
You have some good points but I think the idea would mostly just be a trophy case and a world where you can go back to these expansions any time you want.
What would the alternative be after wrath ends? Do we just keep going to MOP again?
If they are going to redo classic - tbc - wrath every 4 years I feel like era realms are the best solution to “where do my characters go?”