WoW PVE Seasons; the Eternally blissful grind

First off, I would highly recommend watching this video for path of exile.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pM_5S55jUzk

I know that Diablo 3 implements something similar, and it is probably not as successful.

In writing this post, I also have an ulterior motive, which stems from the fact that Blizzard has clearly lost their plot as far as WoW goes, and need people who have a clue like the private server community to tell them what to do.

/Queue "You think you know, but you don't" .

I have personally stopped playing WoW retail back in early Cata. I hopped in to Warmane and really like what these folks have done. So, i dumped enough money to unlock certain orange to see if they can keep going, even though I knew I won't play much. Still, I have my characters here and I like the idea of being able to jump in and play them when I want.

That brings me to the suggestion part. The one I think may work for all legacy realms, no matter what patch. It is what Path of Exile video above argues as their reason for success. - The Big Resets.

Doing this for a game like Wow however is tricky. But it may not be impossible; at least in my opinion. It has to solve two issues that plague high grind expansions like Classic and TBC, which is keeping people's accomplishments relevant (which a fresh realm does not), and providing enough REAL incentive for population to remain high.

Just to make this as unambiguous as possible:

>>> A title, mount or something cosmetic is not a REAL incentive.
>>> Having Kael'thas weapons (that don't despawn) be available at the end of a chest for a Season FIRST guild is a REAL incentive. Especially when they are not available in any other way (even shop). They won't make the next season toons, so who cares? Let those who work hard (like that Luleh guy) have fun and make videos.

So, I won't make this a wall of text and instead let the community shape this discussion, and hope this is genesis of something that would one day be what Retail WoW Classic will do as well. If they don't and warmane does, then it would be a differentiator worth having any way.

Some rules though.

1. The realm struggling is Outland, so lets make it the testbed for this discussions.
2. The suggested changes should be broken into clear two sections if possible.
>>> Server side only changes
>>> Client side changes (likely not possible).

Intelligent comments or flames; there are some passionate people on this server and outside in the legacy community. Please talk to your friends and ask them to come and contribute. I have a few ideas of my own that I will post down the line, but I know you all have good ones too.

The progressive realm, on which Warmane is most likely working on right now, might be a bit similiar to what you suggest.

I think it will work as follow:
The progressive realm starts with vanilla. After all content has been farmed the progressive realm will move on to TBC and a clone version of the realm will remain on vanilla. Ppl can decide if they want to keep their char on the vanilla realm or if they wanna move on to the next xpac. Another option would be that their char will be duplicated and one version of their char remains on the vanilla realm , a second version moves on with the progressive realm.
After all content on TBC has been farmed on the progressive realm it will move on to Wotlk and ppl have the option to transfer or duplicate their char to the Outland realm.
Once all Wotlk content is on farm all characters will be transfered to Icecrown (or a new Wotlk realm) and the progressive realm will start with Classic WoW again.

The progressive realm will have only cosmetics in the shop while the stagnant realms, on which players can transfer or duplicate their char if they wish to stay in a xpac, have a gear shop.

I think the progressive realm will work like that.
Let's see if I'm right...

I'm not sure if the progressive realm will have x1 rates. I think higher rates are more popular.

I'm also curious if the progressive realm will have cross-realm pvp with the stagnant realm of the same Xpac.
Due to the gear difference of the realms that would only be possible with gear based BGs and Arena.

Progressive Realms are interesting. Still, I would argue that they do not solve the problem of keeping a realm with one expansion of WoW of competitive interest, PvE wise, don't you think?

I guess you can say that spreading progression over three expansions would yield nearly 6-7 years worth of playtime. But the experience of progression would still be limited to waves of people who join at the right time to progress. My worry is that a TBC server would find itself just as low population as Outland (relatively speaking), once that wave has left.

The objective of this post from my point of view was to see if there was a way to create a sustainable model that provides rewarding gameplay for each expansion, without needing a jump to another.

One idea for this that I alluded to is having something like this:

1. Outland's first season is finish for PvE, as Sunwell is cleared. Tag all items to go on the "General" pool, which has no restrictions. This can additionally apply to characters as well.
2. "General" Pool will have its own instances of raids, and their own lockout.
3. Begin a new Season 2, for next 1.5 years with a set schedule of progression. This would require tags on items and/or characters to allow for a "Season Specific" instance of raids to be matched up with. Maybe this will switch from website like specs do.
4. Season 2 characters can raid with "General" category as they please. Of course, items that get in "General" are tagged as such, and cannot be used on "Season" instances.
5. "Season 2 first" rewards will be unique items of power. The Kael'thas weapons are appropriate power level for such an achievement, and would likely not need a client change, and keep the loot list Blizzlike. They will also provide enough incentive for people to really try in these seasons, as at the end they will go to the "General" pool, and can be used wherever the "General" tag allows.
6. Season ends for this example with Sunwell clear, and items and/or characters move to "General" pool.
7. New season would begin after this, with dates announced in advance for planning.
8. Shop and Season items is a touchy subject. This is why the Kael'thas legendary or some equal high power reward is needed to balance out things, if shop comes in play as the seasons may not succeed without some shop play to allow for maximum raider involvement.

Would love to see this implemented in WoW Classic as well, but it could just as easily apply to progressive realms with a Vanilla and TBC pairing, where seasons cycle between the two for allowing new joins to experience the thrill of a race, without the boom and bust cycle that exist today, where server becomes a ghost town after the initial hype is done.

Reroll + New Progression on your favorite Expansion + No loosing your community and friends.

I approve KT weps !! Devastator WF crits ftw.