Calling it now, classic will have more players than retail at launch.

[s_bushido]

And then they will all realize why they stopped playing in the first place.

- - - Updated - - -

There is a problem with that logic, considering how many people have played private servers consistently for years.

And how many people is that, exactly?

[Requimortem]

And then they will all realize why they stopped playing in the first place.

I can guarantee you that almost every person who clamored to have vanilla back never actually played it.

[zlygork]

Not going to be THAT extreme lololol

It's just the nicest comparison figure I have, how people always focus on it losing 3M subs even though it had also gained them in a spike

[God Save The King]

Almost certainly, since I believe that they will launch classic during an end of expansion content drought to give the real players something to do in the interim. The legacy only crowd will constantly play whenever they release it, so it makes logical sense to drop it when interest from the real players would be high. Mid x-pac or around a raid tier would be a terrible idea.

[Pickynerd]

Oh yeah, the queues will be stupid, I'll give it 3 weeks before it ends up worse off than Tol Barad.

[MisterBigglez]

Yeah no shit, so many people have been asking for it and this will probably attract many players who quit. I bet that it will quickly drop when people realise how much QoL is gone.

[Zan15]

I have seen so many people that i had no idea even played video games talk/tweet about this its insane. I think this is going to be the largest release blizzard has done in many years, yes even bigger than an expansion release.

My prediction is when this comes out there will be more people playing on classic servers than live, of course i dont expect this to last forever, but for a short period i think this is a very real possibility.

***AT LAUNCH


and within a week there will be a massive exodus, if they keep it true classic.

by the end of the first raid instance in the normal xpack....it will be a ghost town

[bledgor]

Legion only has 500k-1 million active players. Classic will have 10 times that upon launch and easily maintain this for years. You have to be delusional to not see this. No one cares about retail modern WoW, just go browse twitch and you will quickly realize it's dead. A few top twitch streamers however are super hyped for Classic and said they will be streaming it regularly. When this happens Twitch browse will look like this;
Classic WoW
150,000 viewers

Battle for Azeroth
1,200 viewers

Please tell me again why and how modern wow will hold more subs than classic.

Legion has 500k to 1million? Wow you are delusional. Doesn't surprise me, most vanilla lovers are. Also maintain it for years? Not even fucking close, the game will have to be static unless it upgrade to a new expansion, which means people will get bored with the lack of updates, doing the same thing with no progression. I doubt it retains 50% of the initial numbers after 3 months, let alone a year.

[zoned]

How do you not understand that you can't "relive days past"? The world has moved on, and vanilla 2019 or whenever it releases will never be as new or exciting as vanilla 2004.

I don't think this is about reliving the past so much. It's more like being given a rare opportunity to experience the best MMO ever made, under perfect conditions, that only Blizzard can make possible. Everyone has been waiting for the next big MMO that "WoW Killer". Many companies have tried and failed over the past 13 years, including Blizzard themselves with the cancellation of Titan and recent failed WoW xpacs. So as odd as it may sound Classic WoW (what I assume to be Vanilla-WotLK) is the "WoW Killer" quite litterally as I expect BfA to be WoW's final xpac.

[Varitok]

And then they will all realize why they stopped playing in the first place.

- - - Updated - - -



And how many people is that, exactly?

130,000 active accounts on only one of the private servers. I'd probably say about a quarter million if you account for the many vanilla servers. Don't forget that this is also going to be legal and advertised. Drawing in way more people than a regular, pirated server. Just look at the threads on reddit, Far more active discussion for Vanilla excitement than BFA.

[Coconut]

130,000 active accounts on only one of the private servers. I'd probably say about a quarter million if you account for the many vanilla servers. Don't forget that this is also going to be legal and advertised. Drawing in way more people than a regular, pirated server. Just look at the threads on reddit, Far more active discussion for Vanilla excitement than BFA.

130,000 active accounts... 38,377 bans in one year. And that's the people who didn't slip through the cracks.

[darkfire979]

Considering in retail, a large proportion of the playerbase for any new expansion drops off after 1-2 months, I expect at least that much will happen for Vanilla which is non-changing and has less QoL features than the latest expansion

[Deleted]

Quoted for posterity

If you take your own reasons for not wanting to play vanilla out of this, and imagine the endless reasons someone would want to come back/try original wow out you start to get how large this really is going to be. Im actually scared blizzard has no idea yet, and they wont have enough servers lol.

If we are lucky we might get an actual vanilla like launch :P

[Arrent]

I'll only play Vanilla if there's an incentive for my BfA account.

I played and raided in vanilla. If they make a true 1=1 copy of Vanilla, it's not something I look forward to playing. If they alter it w/ QoL life changes and class changes, then it's not actually Vanilla.

[Thereaperszone]

I think blizz is smart enough to massively increase spawn rates of mobs/ore etc at launch, it would be literally unplayable if they didnt. That to me (well, and bugs) is the only thing that should be different about classic.

Then it's not classic

[Thage]

I have seen so many people that i had no idea even played video games talk/tweet about this its insane. I think this is going to be the largest release blizzard has done in many years, yes even bigger than an expansion release.

My prediction is when this comes out there will be more people playing on classic servers than live, of course i dont expect this to last forever, but for a short period i think this is a very real possibility.

Well, sure. Over the last ten-ish years, ever since Cataclysm did away with the original Vanilla world, Vanilla WoW has built up some mystique among the MMO audience at large, helped along by private servers. Add to it that pretty much any PC still in active use today can run the game at medium to high settings without making the CPU or GPU break a sweat, and you've got a game with high replay value, years of essentially free PR hyping it up, and accessible to pretty much anybody with a functioning internet connection. I would be shocked if the Classic servers weren't crammed full at launch. The question is if it can maintain enough of a steady playerbase to match whatever monthly active users metric Blizz will be weighing its success by.

[Kakera]

Ahahahahahahahahaha delusional af

[Fascinate]

Then it's not classic

It would be unplayable if mob/ore scaling wasnt implemented. Remember the guy said they want to reproduce the classic experience, not vanilla launch experience.

Aside from game breaking bugs and spawn rates, i cannot think of anything else that needs changing, which is a good thing

[Craaazyyy]

Now, this post made me laugh really hard. Especially the 2nd part. So you want vanilla... but not vanilla? TBC is not vanilla.
Seems to me like you want wow to do the groundhog day thing and go through expansions again... for some sick reason.

when did i say i want vanilla? i want servers of previous expansions.. and Vanilla is one of them btw, but not the only one

- - - Updated - - -

Difference is, current wow gets new content, patches, expansions. There is only one vanilla. That means no new content forever... forever the same game, forever same bosses, dungeons, raids, items, classes. Totally useless stuff, but at least it will shut up people who want it.

u realize that Vanilla also had content patches right? they would be stupid not to gate vanilla content

- - - Updated - - -

It would be unplayable if mob/ore scaling wasnt implemented. Remember the guy said they want to reproduce the classic experience, not vanilla launch experience.

Aside from game breaking bugs and spawn rates, i cannot think of anything else that needs changing, which is a good thing

vanilla launch experience meant that it was laggy as fuck.. and also the first patch was super bad compared to 1.12 for example.. and it will probably be 1.12 at launch

[Thereaperszone]

It would be unplayable if mob/ore scaling wasnt implemented. Remember the guy said they want to reproduce the classic experience, not vanilla launch experience.

Aside from game breaking bugs and spawn rates, i cannot think of anything else that needs changing, which is a good thing

Spawn rates were fine if you make it easy then its not vanilla and it was playable then so should be now as well