Classic World of Warcraft Discussion [Megathread]

[Deianeira]

In some countries owning classic WoW and modifying it is legal. You actually own it, not Blizzard giving you a right to use the product. So come again how it is wrong in his country if it isn't considered stealing?

"How does it make you feel that my countries views X law as this, and that your country doesn't even have X law, so how do you feel that you are breaking a law you don't have?"

Isn't it the client you actually own?

[zmp]

Big movement from people that played on free realms in the supposed 'best times of WoW' had an 82% leave rate.

I wish i knew the stats on current free retail is like. Silvermoon EU currently flips between high and medium populated, good times..

[gamingmuscle]

You mean growth had slowed down right?

That is what growth declined would mean. Maybe it would have been easier for others to understand.

Yeah sure - but you wanting to link that to the age of the game holds no more weight than me saying it was the removal of exclusive 25 man raid rewards. Or including catch up mechanics like LK patch did.
Hell I could point out anything I wanted and it would hold the same weight as a "game got old" argument.

Except 1 thing against you was the resurge of subs during the start of WoD. It clearly captured something in the market - doubt it was a fluke.

Market ain't dead, they just fucking up the content so the market left them

I didn't link the slowdown to age. I notice it slowed right from the start. First year WoW added more subs then almost the next 3 combined. Assuming vanilla wow was an excellent product the only explanation I can see for the slow down is market sat. Maybe better competition to.

Age is obviously a factor in the games performance. The exact impact of that neither you nor I can exactly calculate it.

I don't think the spike in WoD really goes against me. But it does show at least blizzards hype department did something right. I think it shows that it may be possible to recapture old ex-customers.....but maybe it captured and lost the attention of new customers. Can't determine that really.

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stop man you can not argue with you that guy, he gones rumbling hours about shit like market saturiaton and shit and when give him hard date "well yeah hmmhmh wod goes against the trend i guess, i am still in trhe right because MARKET!""!"

Then why did growth slow in Vanilla, TBC and ultimately stop in Wrath? If its not market saturation and it's design it would indicate that Vanilla wasn't going to grow indefinitely either and that it probably would have plateau around the same time.

[Uurdz]

That is what growth declined would mean. Maybe it would have been easier for others to understand.




I didn't link the slowdown to age. I notice it slowed right from the start. First year WoW added more subs then almost the next 3 combined. Assuming vanilla wow was an excellent product the only explanation I can see for the slow down is market sat. Maybe better competition to.

Age is obviously a factor in the games performance. The exact impact of that neither you nor I can exactly calculate it.

I don't think the spike in WoD doesn't really go against me. But it does show at least blizzards hype department did something right. I think it shows that it may be possible to recapture old ex-customers.....but maybe it captured and lost the attention of new customers. Can't determine that really.

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Then why did growth slow in Vanilla, TBC and ultimately stop in Wrath? If its not market saturation and it's design it would indicate that Vanilla wasn't going to grow indefinitely either and that it probably would have plateau around the same time.

Yes saying Growth Decline is like saying North South.

"I don't think the spike in WoD doesn't really go against me."
The double negative.... So you accept the spike in WoD is a big hole in your theory? And you just want to say - oh blizzard hyped the game up and tricked the market into thinking they wanted to play wow but then they played wow and realise oh wait no i dont want to play an MMORPG.

Wut?

[gamingmuscle]

Thats not even remotly true lol. What are you saying that all player in vanilla and tbc should be their day one like magic? i dont even

That isn't even remotely close to anything I have said.

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Yes saying Growth Decline is like saying North South.

Not really. North South in how I assume you mean it as both cardinal directions and an as indication of what direction to travel. So yes that doesn't make much sense. But that is not the case in my use. Growth is a noun in how it was being used and decline was an adjective. I'll give points that growth slowed may have been clearer than growth declined.

"I don't think the spike in WoD doesn't really go against me."
The double negative.... So you accept the spike in WoD is a big hole in your theory? And you just want to say - oh blizzard hyped the game up and tricked the market into thinking they wanted to play wow but then they played wow and realise oh wait no i dont want to play an MMORPG.

Wut?

You are right about the double negative. Tho it was clearly a misspeak. I'll fix that.

It's not a hole. It 1 data point in a set of what 45+? Its interesting in that it looks like an anomaly of some sort.
I didn't say tricked. Nothing wrong with hype. Hype is good if it gets people in the door. But the product has to deliver to keep people subed. Which I guess WoD didn't.

[AeneasBK]

But why "wait and see" when the solution to their problem is right in their faces? As my last post said, pro Legacy arguements: it's cheap, doesn't take time to implement, 5-10 guys in their basement can run the servers, "safe zones" from copyright law, 250k sigs on the petition, major fanbase willing to pay, willing to quit Blizzard completely. I mean, I literally present them the answer to their problem using the pro Legacy arguements for their cause, and get dismissed I'm trying to derail the thread instead of actually giving them the answer of their dreams. Take Blizzard out of the equation, use Kern's new company to get it going with their small amount of $10 per sig, and find a country to host.

Because all of that is frankly absurd in the face of just logging into one of the many pirate servers in existence already.

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Yes saying Growth Decline is like saying North South.

A change in rate of acceleration is not a paradox.. You can disagree with Gamingmuscle all you want but right from the start he's been saying the rate of growth had been slowing starting in Vanilla and so it was obvious it was going to plateau. Been kinda weird watching peopledebate that point, especially when they post graphs proving what he is saying.

During TBC and Wrath it should also be pointed out that there was large mainstream advertising campaigns (What's Your Game? Night Elf Mohawk etc.); which would have brought in a lot of people who weren't already fans of the Warcraft franchise or MMO games at all.

[Deleted]

Big movement from people that played on free realms in the supposed 'best times of WoW' had an 82% leave rate.

Retail had an infographic a few years back. Over 100.000.000 accounts registered. And currently there are what, 5.000.000 or maybe even less active accounts. So that would be 95% leave rate I guess.

[Uurdz]

Because all of that is frankly absurd in the face of just logging into one of the many pirate servers in existence already.

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A change in rate of acceleration is not a paradox.. You can disagree with Gamingmuscle all you want but right from the start he's been saying the rate of growth had been slowing starting in Vanilla and so it was obvious it was going to plateau. Been kinda weird watching peopledebate that point, especially when they post graphs proving what he is saying.

During TBC and Wrath it should also be pointed out that there was large mainstream advertising campaigns (What's Your Game? Night Elf Mohawk etc.); which would have brought in a lot of people who weren't already fans of the Warcraft franchise or MMO games at all.

meh, not worth a further debate. I still reaffirm my assertion that you cannot write off current Sub levels due to the game dying, nor can you say the steady decline of subs for each expansion after Wrath to be related to end of product life cycle as though it was factual.

Its just lazy given the breath of discussion available for other reasons.

[Deleted]

Wrath had a content drought also. Ruby Sanctum was supposed to tide people over while waiting for Cata.

If only people could follow the quote chains before replying...
Basically someone said that this content drought was the reason for subs going down. And that we had seen the same thing in classic, tbc, wotlk and so on. I know there have been content droughts since like forever. But I was replying to the subs-going-down-because-of-it part.

[flan1337]

what are we trying to debate here? The davinci code or are we still talking about classic servers?

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If only people could follow the quote chains before replying...
Basically someone said that this content drought was the reason for subs going down. And that we had seen the same thing in classic, tbc, wotlk and so on. I know there have been content droughts since like forever. But I was replying to the subs-going-down-because-of-it part.

I mean vanilla and bc didn't have content droughts did they? Most people didn't see sunwell or naxx

[Deleted]

That's not how this works mate.
You are forgetting that at least half of those accounts are banned accounts due to gold farmers using them for trading and stuff.

So you can't assume that all of those accounts are legit accounts. Let's say there is 50m accounts created for the purpose of playing and 5m accounts left active.

This seems normal in any MMO especially after extended period of time such as 10 years.

So if you buy a product which is later either
a) stolen
b) used incorrectly
you have not actually bought the product?

There were tons of goldfarmers @Nostalrius as well, and tons of them were banned. Let's not make assumptions.

[Sabever]

That's not how this works mate.
You are forgetting that at least half of those accounts are banned accounts due to gold farmers using them for trading and stuff.

So you can't assume that all of those accounts are legit accounts. Let's say there is 50m accounts created for the purpose of playing and 5m accounts left active.

This seems normal in any MMO especially after extended period of time such as 10 years.

Just an fyi (not that this means anything) but a few sources are reporting estimates of current player base at anywhere from 2.5MM to 4MM. (Million is MM not M - M is the roman numeral for thousand).

What that means is that a lot WoW is currently smaller than it was upon initial release.

As a note for the spike in subscriptions with WoD. Over 10MM people were playing at the launch of WoD. Some keep saying it was an anomaly in data. I actually contend that this is more of an indication of how popular legacy servers would be. Why? Because when WoD was released they took away flying. They also brought us back into Draenor. A lot of people came back thinking that WoW was returning to its glory days. Only to find that you could level in 1 day, the world was too phased and people just sat in their garrison.

[AeneasBK]

That's not how this works mate.
You are forgetting that at least half of those accounts are banned accounts due to gold farmers using them for trading and stuff.

So you can't assume that all of those accounts are legit accounts. Let's say there is 50m accounts created for the purpose of playing and 5m accounts left active.

This seems normal in any MMO especially after extended period of time such as 10 years.

Naa Blizzard already took that into account, but saying "We had 200 million players but actually 100 million of them where gold-farming bot accounts" doesn't sound as good.


See we can both pull numbers out of our ass

[Darsithis]

Blizzard "may" have a legal right. But why do game players concern themselves with legal rights? I'd rather play games. Fun games. Won't you rather have fun than to drivel on forums about "fun". When the game isn't fun, that's when it turns to forum arguments.

Why do we concern ourselves with legal rights? Many of us don't. I played on Nostalrius.

I'm not picking on you at all. I'm on this forum because I lack a fun game to play. Why are you here?

I'm here because I love World of Warcraft, still play it, and I'm a global moderator of the site.

[akaTheDude]

I really wish we could get an update on how the meeting went and the path going forward.

[HuxNeva]

To illustrate it even more:

Your request is comparable to ask for a redo of Starcraft II while Startcraft II is still alive and played.

Or more to the point, a request be able to officially play Age of Empires II, considered the best of the franchise by a significant portion of the players, when the publisher has released Age of Empires III and retroactively nuked all official AoE II disks and installs in existence

[Deleted]

I really wish we could get an update on how the meeting went and the path going forward.

Have they even met yet?

[Eliseus]

I really wish we could get an update on how the meeting went and the path going forward.

They will be a meeting within a couple weeks. Just hang tight. They are suppose to have an announcement supposedly by this weekend with more info on the matter.

[Martinezzz]

If Vanila servers start people Will play 2 months and quit. That magic vanilla time when WOW started is gone you cant have that today. Comunity is different now and Vanila was fresh new MMO at the time today it just isnt anymore.

Maybe if it was free people would play longer, but if you have to buy gamecard for it it Will be a wasteland in 3 months.

[Chemii]

Just an fyi (not that this means anything) but a few sources are reporting estimates of current player base at anywhere from 2.5MM to 4MM. (Million is MM not M - M is the roman numeral for thousand).

What that means is that a lot WoW is currently smaller than it was upon initial release.

As a note for the spike in subscriptions with WoD. Over 10MM people were playing at the launch of WoD. Some keep saying it was an anomaly in data. I actually contend that this is more of an indication of how popular legacy servers would be. Why? Because when WoD was released they took away flying. They also brought us back into Draenor. A lot of people came back thinking that WoW was returning to its glory days. Only to find that you could level in 1 day, the world was too phased and people just sat in their garrison.

WoD has literally nothing to do with Vanilla, most people quit because of lack of content and the huge failing of Garrisons. Levelling in WoD has nothing to do with it. I think the sub numbers rising should be credited to MoP and is likely in part because they made some huge deal about Orcs and War...yet again.

People keep talking about levelling as if it's super important - it isn't. Getting people out in the world with a reason to be there, is.

Content, basically.

All that said the WoD was fairly promising in the beginning and I enjoyed the first patch immensely, most of us simply ran out of things to do.