Is WotLK the future or the past?

[Mydriv]

I've been around Warmane and private servers in general for many, many years now.

I remember a time when TBC was the cutting edge. The rampant presence of servers whose P2W practices and under the table corruption were so outrageous by today's standards that they seem like a faraway bad joke. Custom "fun" servers along vanilla and TBC servers that had very different goals compared to today. Then came the times of Wrath. Don't really have to praise the expansion—everyone here knows its ups and downs—but AT and the Trinity core really did launch a new era for private servers. Things kept moving forward with the presence of more and more "x1 blizzlike" servers. As retail moved in one direction it felt like the need of the private server community was to experience the old—and not just any old but a good, high quality vintage WoW experience.

When Cataclysm emulation arrived though things stopped moving forward as much. The love for the expansion wasn't quite there while the challenges for the developers were starting to get much harder. For a while it had the "new" expansion charm in the community, but eventually that faded. A common theme in all the expansions that followed: the great difficulty in scripting and emulating them correctly, especially when taking into account the dubious popularity.

Skip to the current year. Blizzard has just launched a successful new expansion and Classic is still pulling its weight with possibly BC on the horizon. In the private server community the vanilla scene is a graveyard, a ghost of what Nostalrius and its predecessors amounted to—which is not surprising, after all they are the people that made Classic happen. Some of the other expansions... exist, let's put it that way. No specifics but there is one outlier for each one usually—and even those aren't really booming while actually possessing good quality scripting. WoD, Legion and BFA are exceptions because of obvious reasons—be it significant unpopularity or great difficulty in emulating them up to the current quality standards. Legion in particular seems the last cry for help of the community, but having played it and having seen the state of the various servers, its realization is years away. Wrath seems to be the only constant. The only middle ground still different enough from retail to encapsulate the old WoW while maintaining enough of the new, more casual-friendly features.

It's a grim look for the private server community outside of this one expansion. It has become so familiar and supported that its popularity is unmatched now that vanilla is gone. TBC never seemed to catch on, a strange in-between of the archaic vanilla and the new old of Wrath. Cataclysm seemed to maybe have the potential to be a hit in the community, but be it the weak lore or the disappointing last patch, it just wasn't a good match against the 3.3 experience. Anything from MoP onward is barely worth talking about, still in its infancy and years away from the "x1 blizzlike" standards we have these days.

Given all this, what do you think Warmane players? Is this the expansion that will stay until the end—whatever that might be for private servers? Is there any expansion whose serious development could overthrow WotLK in your opinion?

[rpgfan10208]

The golden era of private servers is pretty much over anyway. Once Blizz launches WotLK, that's it - the final nail in the coffin.

I don't think anything is gonna be nearly as successful as WotLK, cause let's be honest - WoW is not as "hot" and popular as it was a decade ago and the new expansions (aside from maybe Legion) were ranging from "meh" to "crappy" at best.
Also people have moved on. I know so many people around my age (30) who "grew up" on WoW and then simply moved to PoE. I did too, cause even tho I love WoW I can't stand playing it anymore. I still login here every now and then but the community is nothing as it used to be "back in my day" :/

[MaXiMuS54]

Most people were in it for the PvE content, and basically most people who've had interest in private servers have played through all their desired PvE content on one server or another. So there's basically nothing else to do unless you create custom content or cash tournament incentive because scripting anything past Mists of Pandaria seems impossible. Meanwhile the majority of PvP players are basically stuck on Warmane because any other server you can expect it to die once the PvE content is cleared through.

[Lmaokek]

Idk if warmane would die after wotlk retail will release, this server offer things you can find in retail, specifically:
-> a dedicated pvp server,
-> a "retail like" server where you can even skip grinding for gear by just buying it
-> an hardcore server with buffed up pve content

Blizzard offers literally nothing of this, and honestly this server is scripted pretty good nowadays so i don't expect the "less bugginess" of retail to be anything significant enough to drag players to it. It might lower the afflux of new players to it, but unless it straight up kills the icecrown server i dont see the other servers dieing aswell.

[Shred]

I am concerned about bit rot of the client. The last bug introduced by nvidia was a wake-up call. If we are to conserve this game we must have a libre client. I know how unlikely that is, so I hope blizzard releases a new classic wotlk client that can be used in the future.

[Skoobydoo]

Population will drop for sure when classic WOTLK release, but i dont thinnk Warmane will be effected that much. There is very strong sense of community here and people have invested tons of time/money in it, it will be really hard to quit pernamently. I myself am good example of that, my account exist since 2010 and today i play mostly retail and other MMORPG like BDO,ESO and so on. But regardless of all that i keep coming back to Warmane every few mnonths to play my characters. Not to mention there is tons of custom changes and the cash shop, which is what most PVP players care the most.

As for another expansion that will do well, if they manage to scritp it well Shadowlands is best bet on my opinion.( asuming by the time classic WOTLK release retail will be on another expansion already.) Legion was good but there was too many **** systems that ruin the expansion, meanwhile Shadowlands is just improved and way better version of Legion.

[Orgrimmarqt]

meanwhile Shadowlands is just improved and way better version of Legion.

Have you ever played Shadowlands? haha.

[Skoobydoo]

Have you ever played Shadowlands? haha.

Yes i am playing it since release, have you?