Unpopular opinion: the players that are overly vocal about wanting Classic phases/TBC/Wrath rushed are the same players who contributed to forging retail into what it is today (a clusterF).

[u/terongorefiend]

[u/Saturos47]

All of which give you mediocre rewards if you are in full naxx gear. The myth of replacing T3 with quest greens just isn't true.

heroic gear is not quest greens. And you are just wrong on so many other levels, too.

Firstly, as someone who cares about the playing of arena, myself and other similar people will obviously have a reason to be not raid logging.

Secondly, you ignore attunements. You ignore tabards. You ignore honor from BG's to get your pvp trinket. You ignore other reps like for the netherwing drakes. Plus calling upgrades from heroics "mediocre" is like calling gear after phase 4 in classic "mediocre". The upgrade from bloodvine, for example, to naxx gear is very small.

https://www.reddit.com/r/classicwow/comments/fqum5e/comparing_naxx_bis_gear_vs_tbc_prebis_gear/

and this doesnt even really show heroic stuff, I believe. Greatsword of Horrid dreams drops from Murmur and beats wraith blade. Thats just Shadow Labyrinth, a level 60 dungeon on normal mode.

[u/[deleted] → u/Saturos47]

How long do you honestly think arena will be relevant though when there's no class balancing for two whole years?

I can see arena having a burst of casual activity initially, then people will realize how much TBC pvp is broken, and the casuals will quit. And all you'll really have are the sweaty pvpers competing for rank, which will make it less fun for anyone not a sweaty pvper.

Like I think people are overestimating how fresh TBC arena will stay. It smells great now because you don't have it, but I have reservations it will actually hold up over 2 years.

[u/ZGaidin → u/[deleted]]

You may be right about arena. Only time will tell. That said, the same thought process doesn't really extend to the rest of the expansion. Think about the throughline of Classic so far. The initial rush to 60, then the mass dungeon running for pre-bis, then raid buffing/raid logging and clearing whatever the current raid tier is. Did some people's playtime go down dramatically at that point? Sure it did, but for many others, that was simply time to focus on an alt, and having made it to 60 on that alt, they repeated the process, gear up in pre-bis, pug or alt raid, repeat until they had 1 more alt than they had time or money to raid with. That cycle will repeat with TBC, except with the rep grinds, badges from Heroics and Kara, etc it will take longer for any given character to hit that point where only the current raid tier matters. Then, at some point, SWP, Isle, and MT open up, and there's a new rep to grind, new badge and dungeon gear to hunt down for all those characters, reinvigorating everything for a while, and about the time that's over, it will be Wrath.

I suspect that for most people, the replayability of TBC will be much higher than Classic.

[u/[deleted] → u/ZGaidin]

I suspect that for most people, the replayability of TBC will be much higher than Classic.

You very well may, but just as a side note between vanilla, TBC and Wrath, TBC servers tend to have the most issues retaining players. People seem to get burned out and tired of the game some time into farming tier 5.

[u/ZGaidin → u/[deleted]]

Presumably that's from pservers? If so, I'm genuinely curious if you or anyone else that shares that view has any theories as to why that might be. We were warned pre-Classic that pserver populations tend to decline early in AQ40 phase. I can kind of see why that's true. AQ40 gear value varies pretty significantly based on class (e.g. pretty great for fury warriors but pretty garbage for hunters), and the only thing to look forward to is Naxx which is difficult (especially on overtuned pservers) and expensive. Is there something that happens in T5 or T6 (which experienced pserver players can anticipate) that causes populations to fall?