[Xunjin]

That's one of the things that Blizzard does so bad and private servers try to solve, which is previous expansion content:

Let's say you loved playing Battle for Azeroth. Later Blizzard launches Shadowlands, the content for BfA gets irrelevant, the raids are not doable anymore at the same difficult, the power creep feeds in. Even if you buy the expansion just to get the “feel” on how it was, it's impossible.

MMOs like GW2 and even SWTOR does it way better, in GW2 content from Path of Fire is still relevant in the gameplay of the current expansion, while their PvE/PvP content is done by all players.

I feel Blizzard should just keep per expansion servers up and people can play “over and over again” the same expansion as much as they like.

[dminvs]

FFXIV's level/stat sync system is also pretty cool for keeping the older stuff playable long past its original release, players get levels and stats and skills scaled down to the max level appropriate for the content

4-player dungeons still end up being a bit of a faceroll, but it's definitely possible to wipe on the 8-player bosses if mechanics are not observed

[ziml77]

I found it very unfun. You end up in dungeons with a subset of the abilities you're used to. It felt especially bad, when leveling, if I queued for a random dungeon and got into a lower level one shortly after acquiring a new ability.

[vbezhenar]

I don't know much about FF. But a thing with WoW is that new release often brings a significant rework of many game mechanics; they might squish everyone's level; edit stats for millions of items; rework class talents and abilities, sometimes even bringing up the whole new approach to the talents.

So while just scaling down characters is technically not hard to do and there's tech in WoW for that, it's never the same as playing previous expansion. And players want genuine experience.

And preserving all the old mechanics for 12 of expansions would present a whole new class of challenges to a team. WoW is a huge game. They already plagued by lots of bugs.

[tsimionescu]

In FF, the system is very simple, and indeed is not trying in any way to give the original experience. You can sync to a level 30 dungeon, and your character will be scaled so it has the exact abilities it would have today as a level 30 class. Stats from gear are also scaled down by some formulas that still try to take into account the quality of your gear relative to the current best possible.

But this system exists for an entirely different purpose than a TBC server. It exists mostly to make sure low level content is still full of players, so that new players going through the story or players leveling up new classes can always find parties for dungeons. It also helps break the monotony of doing the same few current dungeons/raids all of the time

Note that in FF you have to do the huge main story quest on any new character before you can really access the latest content, regardless of how much you might level, and the main quest also involves runs through most dungeons. I should add that normally people only do this once on one character, since you can level all different classes (called jobs) on the same character - you can be a level 90 robe-wearing black mage if using a staff, and then you equip daggers and become a level 31 ninja in leather armor, or an axe and become a level 67 tank warrior.

[ocdtrekkie]

WoW has been doing this for like a decade. A lot of the old expansion content gets level scaled for new players, many dungeon groups get scaled to the same level, some of their time travel events have scaled old dungeons up for current players, etc.

[sReinwald]

You clearly haven't played WoW in a decade, judging from this comment.

> Even if you buy the expansion just to get the "feel" on how it was, it's impossible.

You don't buy previous expansions after a new one launches - they roll into the base subscription. After Shadowlands released, buying BfA separately wasn't even an option.

> MMOs like GW2 and even SWTOR do it way better

“Keep every expansion fully relevant forever” sounds nice until you think through what that actually means for an MMO like WoW. You would either fragment the player base across twenty years of content or turn gearing and balance into a complete circus.

Imagine your best-in-slot trinkets from the current raid and Siege of Orgrimmar, your tier set from Dragon Soul, the weapon from Hellfire Citadel. Try organizing a group when other classes need gear from Icecrown Citadel, The Everbloom, Argus and Ahn'Qiraj.

The point of "current expansion content is relevant" is that it funnels the player base into a fairly narrow area of the theme park. That is important, because if you spread out the population over 20 years worth of content, you risk making the world feel incredibly empty, which is a death sentence for a theme park MMORPG.

Blizzard’s actual approach is much more sane: older content comes back in controlled ways. Timewalking reopens older expansion content with scaling and relevant rewards, and Mythic+ seasons already rotate older dungeons into the current endgame pool. Midnight's Season One, for example, features dungeons from Wrath of the Lich King, Warlords of Draenor, Legion, and Dragonflight.

[orphea]

  Blizzard’s actual approach is much more sane: older content comes back in controlled ways.

Agreed. This is one of the things Blizzard actually nailed.

[Xunjin]

> You clearly haven't played WoW in a decade, judging from this comment.

Funny you say that, my Alunira[0] mount took me almost 50 played hours to farm.

0.https://www.wowhead.com/item=223270/alunira

> You don't buy previous expansions after a new one launches - they roll into the base subscription. After Shadowlands released, buying BfA separately wasn't even an option.

They took so long to make that decision, at least they did right?

> “Keep every expansion fully relevant forever” sounds nice until you think through what that actually means for an MMO like WoW. You would either fragment the player base across twenty years of content or turn gearing and balance into a complete circus.[...]

That's your opinion and you are free to have them, but not your "own facts". GW2 do an horizontal progression that you do not need to farm gears between expansions or even major patches, if you play high-end content in WoW, you must know that with every new raid launch in the same expansion, players need to grind a lot to still be relevant.

You also already know, if you really play the retail currently, that how much "services" are offered for people to get like "AOTC" with gold because it's inhuman how much gear grinding to be able to do that achievement and collect it's rewards.

> Blizzard’s actual approach is much more sane: older content comes back in controlled ways. Timewalking reopens older expansion content with scaling and relevant rewards, and Mythic+ seasons already rotate older dungeons into the current endgame pool. Midnight's Season One, for example, features dungeons from Wrath of the Lich King, Warlords of Draenor, Legion, and Dragonflight.

Have you ever question yourself why are there so many private servers? As someone who plays them on and off an argument that always come is "I just want to play that expansion over and over again, and choose which one". And not play a "mix of retail and classic content in a timed gated window".

My "wow credentials" so you stop assuming wrongly: Mythic Raider (never really got Cutting Edge, what I did most was in BfA) and Mythic+ Dungeons (multiples KSM) ;)

[cosmic_cheese]

As a current (albeit casual) player of mainline WoW, I think its biggest problem is how hard it's locked itself into the idea of what an expansion should be. Every expansion has more or less followed the TBC playbook: higher level cap, new landmasses and instanced content, total gear reset.

Of course it's going to become impossible to keep everything relevant when they keep stacking the tower higher for decades.

There's no reason why an expansion couldn't expand on what's already there instead of throwing everything out. They could for example do an expansion that fleshes out current zones that could use more love and expands the game horizontally. That doesn't mean they have to abandon the TBC model, but even if they'd just gone with a repeating pattern of "horizontal-vertical" with expansion releases they'd have a lot less content to try to juggle.

[wiseowise]

> Let's say you loved playing Battle for Azeroth.

Well, here’s your problem. You need to fix that and eat whatever shit they throw your way, pay the money and say thanks.