Classic is going to be huge numbers wise.

[HammondQ]

I speculate that 50%+ of the active player base will try it once it's released. After 6 months I speculate that 8% or less of the player base will continue to play it in any serious way.

[McFuu]

This is what I suspect.

I'm not sure Blizzard have quite realised what they've done. I can easily see every current WoW player wanting to at least try Classic in some form in week 1. And I can see a lot of former players coming back to try it. When both are added together the numbers on classic could well exceed the numbers Blizzard saw in the vanilla years. In fact I'd go as far as to say they'll easily surpass those numbers day 1.

The Twitch numbers are also going to be huge. There are a lot of big number streamers expressing serious interest in playing classic. It could easily surpass 100,000 viewers on a regular basis putting it in the top 3 games list.

It's going to be insanely popular. I wonder if Blizzard quite realise just how popular it's going to be.

No. The top vanilla server that was running a true vanilla client had 250k accounts. Not active accounts, just accounts. Active numbers were in the 10k to 20k a month range.

[huth]

AS someone that played on Frostmourne OCE when WOD Dropped, I had maybe 1hrs of inconvenience in the entire first Week of WoD. "practically unplayable" is some serious overexaggeration.

I remember everybody complaining about the Garrison being "broken", when in reality they just didn't get a free slot on the instance server. It was a design mistake to funnel everybody into the Garrison right after the initial Tanaris experience, but nothing that couldn't be handled with a little patience and walking back and forth on the Garrison scenario/open world boundary

[Feltima]

I highly doubt Blizzard is going to release WoW Classic as a 100% vanilla experience, using the same code from damn near 15 years ago. They're smart enough to be aware that the vast majority of players, including those who played Vanilla and played till at least WOTLK expect various QoL improvements that have been received well by the player base. I'm betting those changes will make it into Classic. Classic will be a vanilla experience. Designed to give players the feel of vanilla but within context that most vanilla players are in their late 20s-30s and don't have time to grind rep, spend 30+ hours a week prepping/raiding, etc. I loved Vanilla back in the day, and would enjoy that same feel from back then, but I don't have the free time or drive to play a MMO I did as a teenager, and if Blizzard isn't aware of this they're in for a rude awakening.

[pateuvasiliu]

So huge, that even when they had private servers for FREE they had a fraction of the playerbase of Retail.

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90% of the people I still know playing WoW and in my Guild have been around since Classic and early TBC. People underestimate how many Vanilla players that give Zero shits about Vanilla servers exist.

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AS someone that played on Frostmourne OCE when WOD Dropped, I had maybe 1hrs of inconvenience in the entire first Week of WoD. "practically unplayable" is some serious overexaggeration.

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There sheer amount of times I fell through the World in Vanilla alone is more than the amount of bugs I experienced overall between Wrath and Legion.

What are you on about? WoW last had 5 million players and at some point had 12 million ( early Cata ). It's pretty obvious the gross majority of people that played Vanilla aren't playing today.

[Azadina]

AS someone that played on Frostmourne OCE when WOD Dropped, I had maybe 1hrs of inconvenience in the entire first Week of WoD. "practically unplayable" is some serious overexaggeration.

Practically unplayable sounds correct to me. Took me 10 days (TEN) to level 90-100 on Silvermoon. And that was not for lack of trying. Good luck questing when due to server lag everything is phased out 3 hours at a time, before mobs and NPCs spawn for 5 minutes, then rinse and repeat. Oh, and any of the points where one needed to visit garrison? Better reserve 5 hours for just that.

You know Blizzard refunded some playtime after that disaster? You seriously think they'd do that, if people got "1 hour of inconvenience"?

[garneroutlaw]

I highly doubt Blizzard is going to release WoW Classic as a 100% vanilla experience, using the same code from damn near 15 years ago. They're smart enough to be aware that the vast majority of players, including those who played Vanilla and played till at least WOTLK expect various QoL improvements that have been received well by the player base. I'm betting those changes will make it into Classic. Classic will be a vanilla experience. Designed to give players the feel of vanilla but within context that most vanilla players are in their late 20s-30s and don't have time to grind rep, spend 30+ hours a week prepping/raiding, etc. I loved Vanilla back in the day, and would enjoy that same feel from back then, but I don't have the free time or drive to play a MMO I did as a teenager, and if Blizzard isn't aware of this they're in for a rude awakening.

My thoughts exactly. I came out of the woodwork, because the vocal minority voicing for a "purist experience" could possibly really hurt the chances of this server being great. I really want the server to do well, and I would love to relive some moments. But I don't want to relive all the pain and heartache that it took just to get through most of AQ40 and a few bosses into Naxx.

[Super Kami Dende]

Practically unplayable sounds correct to me. Took me 10 days (TEN) to level 90-100 on Silvermoon. And that was not for lack of trying. Good luck questing when due to server lag everything is phased out 3 hours at a time, before mobs and NPCs spawn for 5 minutes, then rinse and repeat. Oh, and any of the points where one needed to visit garrison? Better reserve 5 hours for just that.

You know Blizzard refunded some playtime after that disaster? You seriously think they'd do that, if people got "1 hour of inconvenience"?

Hahaha.. Silvermoon? Really. It has a population as of now of 288k. Frostmourne has 688k. So If I was fine with NPC and Mob spawns and latency as an Australian that connected to a Server that was not yet in Australia. I'd say the "practically unplayable" over exaggeration is still an over exaggeration.

[Flurryfang]

This is what I suspect.

I'm not sure Blizzard have quite realised what they've done. I can easily see every current WoW player wanting to at least try Classic in some form in week 1. And I can see a lot of former players coming back to try it. When both are added together the numbers on classic could well exceed the numbers Blizzard saw in the vanilla years. In fact I'd go as far as to say they'll easily surpass those numbers day 1.

The Twitch numbers are also going to be huge. There are a lot of big number streamers expressing serious interest in playing classic. It could easily surpass 100,000 viewers on a regular basis putting it in the top 3 games list.

It's going to be insanely popular. I wonder if Blizzard quite realise just how popular it's going to be.

Blizzard will proberly try to keep the server/servers high and strong, but they are proberly also aware that the number of players will vary ALOT. In the first month, you will proberly see more players then WoW have seen since Wrath, but after the first month or so, the hardcore is left and i wonder if that is enough to fill more then 1 or 2 servers.

So it will be fun to see how they do it, how they manage taking on the entire playerbase of WoW and then still having a system, that is not broken and feel deserted if a 100th only keep staying.

[dwarven]

Doubt it's going to be bigger than retail, but it might be pretty big; at least for a while. Then drop. Dramatically.

Retail isn't even that popular right now. Server activity is in pretty steep decline due to the oversimplification of so many things, like leveling, account-wide everything, group finding etc... It's practically a single player game at this point.

[Mormolyce]

Practically unplayable sounds correct to me. Took me 10 days (TEN) to level 90-100 on Silvermoon. And that was not for lack of trying. Good luck questing when due to server lag everything is phased out 3 hours at a time, before mobs and NPCs spawn for 5 minutes, then rinse and repeat. Oh, and any of the points where one needed to visit garrison? Better reserve 5 hours for just that.

You know Blizzard refunded some playtime after that disaster? You seriously think they'd do that, if people got "1 hour of inconvenience"?

IIRC, I hit the Garrison bug, shook my head, took a screenshot of heaps of people milling around the broken quest point and went to bed. In the morning it was all resolved and I had no further issues.

Mind you I never cared about hitting max level ASAP so I just took my time anyway.

[VyersReaver]

Oh look, another one of those posts. Can't hear you because of all that gargling going on.

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Retail isn't even that popular right now. Server activity is in pretty steep decline due to the oversimplification of so many things, like leveling, account-wide everything, group finding etc... It's practically a single player game at this point.

And you pull that info right out of your ass, don't you?

[Eurhetemec]

If they don't gate the launch in some way, the launch numbers for Classic will indeed be insane.

I suspect I know their solution - a long open (to subscribers) "beta" for Classic.

Calling it an "open beta" would likely both lower expectations, and reduce numbers of players to safe numbers. People will also be less upset when they can't log on, day 1, because it's just a beta. But it'll let them gauge excitement levels and so on pretty accurately.

So they'll do that or something like it, then when it's both stable and they have a good idea of how many people are interested, they'll do an official launch with much fanfare. This will get huge numbers - if they go the expected route - one subscription covers both WoW and Classic - then they'll likely spike the highest they've been since Cata, possibly even above Cata. But it won't last. If it lasts two months that would be astounding. Still, it's a lot of money!

The real question is, how many Classic servers will they have, and what will they do for the people on the ones which get depopulated? I mean, don't get me wrong, some Classic servers, at least a handful, will remain popular/busy, even after the nostalgia tourists and retro tourists have left, but many more will be pretty empty, and with no mechanisms to counteract that, I think the people on those may be a tad sad. So they'll have to come up with something.

[dwarven]

Oh look, another one of those posts. Can't hear you because of all that gargling going on.

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And you pull that info right out of your ass, don't you?

There are about 1.5 million active characters level 20-110. Even connected realms are becoming barren, as is the case with mine. Frostwolf/Vashj

[GreenJesus]

After about level 50 I expect 85% of the people to quit.

[Lexia]

Can't wait for that AGI SPI cloth armor....

[Arrowstormen]

After about level 50 I expect 85% of the people to quit.

I suspect 85% will quit a loooong time before they hit 50.

I mean, I will probably check it out, just for a bit of nostalgia. But it will never be the same. It's not 2004-2006 anymore, both the players and the world has changed dramatically since then. I'm a chicken and don't dare to say for sure more people won't be playing Classic servers over current content the first week, but I doubt it.

[GreenJesus]

There are about 1.5 million active characters level 20-110. Even connected realms are becoming barren, as is the case with mine. Frostwolf/Vashj

You do realize the "1.8 million" was a sample right? Learn to read.

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I suspect 85% will quit a loooong time before they hit 50.

True... haha.. its just at that point the grind gets reeeal.

[dwarven]

You do realize the "1.8 million" was a sample right? Learn to read.

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True... haha.. its just at that point the grind gets reeeal.

Or maybe you need to learn how to use the internet. According to WoW Census, there are currently 1.63 million active characters levels 20-110. Using a web archive, we can find an archived version of the same site. According to WoW Census on July 14th, 2010, there were 5.7 million characters active, levels 10-80. And WoW is currently a lot more alt friendly than it was then, so overall active accounts are probably even lower. I'm guessing WoW currently has 2-3 million active accounts, some of which have no active characters, but are still active due to recurring subscriptions, or are paid up with the 6-month subscription option.

[Baltasar]

Over 5 million on classic? dont think so