I do, vaguely, recall writing something, at some point, about the way Blizzard might have adapted EverQuest's Progression Server model to their own ends but that would have been back when Blizz were still in denial about the validity or value of doing anything at all. Once they abandoned the increasingly untenable position of "you say you want this but really you don't" and moved to "okay, fine, have the damn thing, then" I mostly stopped thinking about the what and moved on to the when.
With a WoW expansion imminent it seemed unlikely we'd see much movement on WoW Classic this year. Blizzard has historically had something of a hammock problem with WoW. Subscriber numbers, which they don't tell us any more, slump between the tentpoles of expansions.
That's been a consideration for a lot longer than I realized, as I discovered when I googled "WoW expansion cadence". As far back as 2013 Blizzard was talking about moving to an expansion every year. Greg Street aka Ghostcrawler expressed that desire very clearly when he said
"We find that expansions are what bring players back to World of Warcraft. Really good patches will keep them, but they aren't as good at bringing players back to the game. We really want to get to a cadence where we can release expansions more quickly. Once a year I think would be a good rate".
That never happened and the problem of account retention remains. This being an expansion year, and with WoW expansions still generally appearing bi-annually, it would clearly be handy to slot the one-off project into an off-year.
To this end, work has to be done, not least in nailing down what the end product is going to look like. It has, after all, been a bit vague up to now. Not Star Citizen vague, for sure, but still more than a bit misty around the edges.
Significant clarity arrived yesterday with a decision on exactly what "Vanilla" means in the context of this project. Wilhelm reported that the Classic Server will specifically replicate the WoW experience as it stood on the day Patch 1.12: Drums of War went live in August 2006.Which is interesting for a number of reasons, not least, as we all know, that no two people can ever agree on what constitutes the "Classic" period of any MMORPG. Deciding to bore down on a point as specific as this risks being seen as both arbitrary and partial.
It also strongly suggests that the WoW Classic server is going to be a timeslice. MattH in the comment thread at TAGN (actually it's the only comment as I write this...) makes it plain: "It’s certainly not a progressive one within classic/vanilla, which indicates that they are probably aiming for a “get done and get out” experience".
I'm so used to "Classic" servers actually being "Progression" servers it hadn't really occurred to me that Blizzard might be planning on a frozen slice of time that never changes. If that's always been their conception of the demand then their longtime position - "you think you want it but you really don't" - makes a lot more sense.
Progression servers, particularly the first time they appear in an MMO, have dynamism. They go some way to scratching the itch we all have to go back to the good times in our past but they also offer a clear and present path to the future. Not only do they offer the greatest chance of hitting everyone's individual Golden Age at some point during the run but they provide a number of jump-on points, each of which is a potential surge in membership and revenue.
A server that simply locks at a specific snapshot of the game risks stagnation. There is a market for an unchanging experience as can be seen by the number of "maintenance mode" MMOs that still hold some kind of population but it's easy to see why a company as large and successful as Blizzard might not consider that audience sufficiently large or profitable to encourage.
There is precedent, of course. As mattH says, "the most popular private servers are vanilla". And the most popular EverQuest private server is Project99. Some people want what they want. It also makes the Official Classic WoW server very much easier to maintain and operate. All the work is upfront. Once it's done Blizzard could literally say "there you go - enjoy!" and walk away, never touching the thing again except to make sure the server stays up.What I expect might happen is this: the Classic server will run as a sop for the "Vanilla was best" crowd. You want Vanilla? You got Vanilla. Go play it and stop bothering us. At the same time it will provide a testbed for demand. If it makes money and holds a significant population, future calls - and there will be plenty of them - for a version of Classic WoW that doesn't just remain static but progresses, will be heard with sympathy.
WoW has always had a very competetive playerbase. The concept of Server and World Firsts, both individually and for guilds, is deeply embedded there. The game has possibly the best structure to support "race to the top" competitive play of any PvE MMORPG. With the base game and six expansions it has a progression ladder that could very comfortably be tweaked to run for two or three years, long enough for interest to accrue to allow the whole thing to begin all over again.
WoW was made for Progression Servers. Almost literally. If Classic is a success - and it will be, commercially at least - we will come to see it as the dry run for what will become a major - perhaps the major - income stream for the aging MMO in the 2020s.
So long as Blizzard can continue to swallow their pride and think of the dollars, that is.
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