However, it's worth mentioning that Runescape now officially offers a "classic" version of the game alongside (and separate from) the modern version, which should be an interesting experiment to watch.
I've always thought that level caps in MMOs, particularly the WoW variety slash-and-burn where you basically make a new theme park every two years and throw the last one in the dumpster in terms of player viability, is a destructive cycle not conductive to building real living worlds.
If existing players who are willing to buy new expansions whenever they are available migrate to vanilla servers, they might as well opt out of buying the expansions, since adding new content in the vanilla servers will make them non-vanilla.
Huh.
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It's pretty simple to avoid the problem of having players scattered across multiple content sets and levelcaps: stop bleeding your players dry. What are subscription fees paying for if not ongoing development of additional content?
IMO you should either charge for expansions or charge subscription fees - but not both.
WoW was, from the outset, designed to railroad players through content theme parks and give a hit of dopamine just often enough to keep them playing.
Theme Park/Resort Casino. Basically dazzle your senses while getting you to play a rigged game to massage you with variable schedule of reward. A real, living world is spoiler-proof.
I do not see how they would be splitting the userbase, when many of the players of this server wouldn't even consider returning to Blizzard's current product.
The problem I see is old versions would be unlikely to get updates like new content or dungeons so even those hoping to play long term would get bored eventually.
Games age and taste change too. Blizzard has done an amazing job to see so many millions of players interested. The one surprise to me is how low of level their free play is limited to.
Otherwise, I do see your point. As much as I'd enjoy it if they offered new players/characters the option of playing revised post-Cataclysm content for leveling or "classic" content instead, it might pull away enough of the existing population to make early group quests painful. (Although, that could be mitigated somewhat in the same manner their cross-realm stuff currently works.)
You may be right about the nostalgic effects, although it is a pretty powerful effect and certainly got one particular company's side venture off to a good start [1]. In the times I've toyed around with TrinityCore, I find I'd play it at least 2-3 times a week if I had friends who weren't absolutely terrified of the potential for permanent bans--the old content was that enjoyable to me. Nevertheless, I recently re-subscribed to retail this February, and I enjoy it, but it feels like it's missing something. It doesn't have the same charm, but I do appreciate a few of the improvements (the "spell crunch" is miserable, however).
I'm a sample size of one, though, and that's certainly not enough to make any time investment worthwhile on Blizzard's behalf.
[1] http://www.polygon.com/2014/7/21/5913763/gog-com-back-catalo...