People that say 'classic will nosedive after a few months'

[Lagwin]

Does the same not happen with the current retail version?

Classic will always have plenty of players.

There will always be players; I would imagine at least a similar number to the current WoW.

Classic has the potential to hold player numbers longer than current, the journey lasts longer before you even get to "end game"

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I know hundreds of people who went "wow vanilla did suck balls, TBC rulez" right after 2.1 patch. Implication that "old WoW players" will return is based literally on nothing.

And people said the same for wotlk, and cata and panda land, all the while sub numbers dropped and vanilla private servers got a lot of attention...gee, i wonder why?

[Deleted]

This would be my guess too. The thing is though, you really cant predict how it will go down, Blizzard has no fucking clue how popular it will be. I can imagine casual players not worrying about getting to 60 and just playing multiple alts with friends and doing dungeons and stuff.

I don't think a casual player can do a dungeon in classic wow. It takes at best half an hour to find a group, especially at lower levels cause no worldwide chat and such so you better hope people are in the same zone as you or you can go manually ask every person of your level. Then it takes you -at best- half an hour to get to some out of the way dungeon.. lets say WC as alliance or gnomeregan as horde. Now you have spent an hour of your evening of casual gaming after work/study/kids/whatever preparing to go do content. This is assuming, nobody drops out and you can find a tank/healer in such short time.

I don't see a casual gamer do that. I am a 'casual' now, I just raid in Legion, do some Overwatch and play the occasional bout of xcom or whatnot. Spending potentially hours trying to get to actually playing seems like a huge waste of time.

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And people said the same for wotlk, and cata and panda land, all the while sub numbers dropped and vanilla private servers got a lot of attention...gee, i wonder why?

Cause it's free and people are cheap ?

[Dentelan]

Retail nosedives for one main reason:

Content is too easy, so people burnout.

I remember in Cata - I came late to the expansion. First expansion I didn't hardcore no-life. Hit cap, ran some dungeons, got a bunch of free epics, qued up one time for "LFR" - killed Deathwing - got her sword. Logged off. "Well, guess I beat the game." I never returned. I had no interest in joining a guild, and attempting to beat it on other difficulties.

Why? I still don't get it.

You've given everyone the chance to do the content, so now there's nothing to strive for.

Because its not interresting when devs make all players as equal as possible. Its somekind of freaking communism. *From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs*. Thats what actual wow is, freaking communism swamp. Everyone can see deathwing/kiljaeden. No *places for elite gamers* left. I have same issue, i understand that if i want hardcore bosses i can go mythic. But somehow - i dont want. Just not interested going somewhere where i have been *physically* with my character. Im strongly against system of lfr-normal-heroic-mythic raids. It kills interest.

Also, one of major problems of current wow, that players dont have any need of doing anything between pve and pvp. No need to spend time on farming pots, finding people, explaining tactics. You just log and you just go. In this situation you get tired of game really fast.
But im happy that classic is going back, it is mmorpg where you CANT succes alone. In legion you can. Thats main difference.

[Dragon Claws]

Vanilla, if it remains 1:1, will be seen initially as the best thing ever. But then the rose-tinted nostalgia goggles start to come off after a few short weeks, people will get bored, and either come back to current content, or quit entirely.

[Flurryfang]

Does the same not happen with the current retail version?

Classic will always have plenty of players.

There will always be players; I would imagine at least a similar number to the current WoW.

Using the word always is a big mistake. Like any other version of WoW since Wrath, Classic is gonna lose players after launch. It is simply how "expansions" for WoW works. Alot of people have acces to the game, but not all stay around. Even when it comes to Classic which is kind of "new", alot of players will try and alot of players will leave. It is simply the nature of MMOs now.

The question is then if the number of players will settle down on something comfortable. My guess is that Classic will do fine, but proberly not to the numbers that some people except...... Blizzard will be satisfied, but not thrilled of the numbers. I simply think it is too late or too soon for Blizzard to do this. Have they done it in MoP or WoD, it would have been good or if they had waited for the end of WoW "1", it would have been better, i think.

[HitRefresh]

Only if you play with your nose.

Stop with this bullshit, it didnt take us 2 years to clear Vanilla , it took us 2 years because stuff werent released yet and unbalanced as fuck, it was 2005, now everyone knows where everything is, it will be roflstomped by the people already roflstomping it in private servers and that roflstomped it in 2005.

With the difference, there is no searching involved, or bypassing shit, we know where everything is.

Everyone knows what the Hounds in MC do now, everyone knows who to dispel in Lucifron, everyone knows everything, those bosses were cleared in shit ass gear, and they will be cleared again, this time much faster cause people know what to do, no surprises, no "wtf"

Do you remember how retarded people were in MC when they re-released it for the anniversary? And that's with modern spells and shit. You have too much confidence in this.

[Meiffert]

as i already mentioned, there is a good crowd of up to ~20k people spread on the different private servers playing daily.
[...]
I literally expect a 300-500k from those private servers, combined with a good another 500k-1mil returning just to check classic at launch.

I don't follow your reasoning at all.
There are ~20k players on private servers (sounds reasonable), many of those can't afford/don't want to pay for subscription.
I've played with some friends on a private server years ago and subscription was the sole reason for not playing retail. It's not a lot, but when you are a teenager with no income in a "cheaper" country, even the 13 euro is more than you necessarily want to pay.

So some of those 20k will be willing to pay for a better/more stable experience of official servers and that makes 500k?

Don't get me wrong, no doubt many players will try the classic server for a bit.
But expecting millions of stable long-term players (I know that's not necessarily you, but others in this and other topics) is insanely out of touch. I expect the numbers to be in tens of thousands, which is not bad all things considered (there are other games with that amount of players and they are not some rehashed 15 years old relaunch).

[Deleted]

Because people understand the basics of marketing and human behavior.

It will be perceived as a novelty of some sorts and thus perform well for a month, up to 3... but then monthly active users will fall of, leaving the game with some steady players.

It's no secret that WoW is past it's prime and expansions past wrath where it peaked (at least as customer numbers are concerned) have been what you call "product relaunches", focusing on making an old product more adapted to new trends.

Vanilla has no appeal to today's market and is mainly interesting for old players; who will probably come back at the beginning and slowly drop off. At that stage Blizzard will try to reach out to those who didn't return yet... but customer recovery is often a costy endeavor and it's just the question of time as to when bringing back one of them will produce more costs than revenue and they will basically cease marketing it.

[Wildmoon]

It's only realistic to expect classic to have the initial big spike then declining to only certain number of dedicated players.

[Adamas102]

And people said the same for wotlk, and cata and panda land, all the while sub numbers dropped and vanilla private servers got a lot of attention...gee, i wonder why?

I don't wonder. The game got older and older, losing its ability to pull in brand new players to offset the people that naturally leave over time. It isn't rocket science. Private servers drew only a small percentage of the people who left the game.

[Aaronioslo]

Does the same not happen with the current retail version?

Classic will always have plenty of players.

There will always be players; I would imagine at least a similar number to the current WoW.

you don't need this amount of self-hypnosis and self-indulging if you actually believes it, somethings don't actually become true if you repeat it enough times to yourself.

100 posts each day is sad.

it will not only take a nosedive, it will crash and burn. as it turns out people don't want vanilla but rather want their ideal of vanilla

[Akka]

I'm just hoping it doesn't damage the guild my main is in in the 'real' game.

Why would it ? You spent your time posting that people aren't interested in anything challenging nor inconvenient, so there should be no problem with people on current WoW going away on Classic, right ?

I don't think a casual player can do a dungeon in classic wow.

And how do you think the original WoW players managed ?
You remind me of the guys who said "it's normal that leveling has become so mindlessly easy, it's to not drive away a new player", while somehow forgetting that we were all new players originally, and we did it just fine.

Cause it's free and people are cheap ?

Internet is littered with free games. Even if it's free, you don't spend your time on it if you don't like it.
Also, the "it's free" is a pretty shitty excuse, considering if it were really the attractive point, these same players wouldn't have been the ones lobbying Blizzard for Classic server. Duh. Logic for dummy.

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Vanilla, if it remains 1:1, will be seen initially as the best thing ever. But then the rose-tinted nostalgia goggles start to come off after a few short weeks.

Private Vanilla servers have been working non-stop for years and went so strong it forced Blizzard to take notice.
That's a lot of "few short weeks" here.

Yes, a LOT of people who are just having a look for nostalgia's sake or because they're curious of what the noise is about are going to try, get bored and live. Everyone but the delusional idiots who think Classic will replace current WoW know this.
But there is a lot of people (maybe not millions, but at the very least tens of thousands) who will play it for the long run.

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I don't follow your reasoning at all.
There are ~20k players on private servers (sounds reasonable)

Are you stupid ?
There are about 20k CONCURRENT players on A SINGLE private server.
You do know that even private server players sometimes log off and sleep and eat and go to work and sometimes don't log for some time and other shit. To keep 20k concurrent players, it means there is about 100-150 k regular players.

And that's ONE server. And yes it includes people who only play because it's free, but it also doesn't include people who don't touch an illegal server, people who don't touch a buggy non-Blizzard run server, people who don't touch a server which can go bust at the drop of a hat and people who don't know about private servers.

I'm not saying the Classic playerbase will be larger than BfA, but it certainly will be orders of magnitude more than 20k. Duh.

[Deleted]

Does the same not happen with the current retail version?

imagine you had to relive the timeframe from your (X)th to your (X+1)th Birthday over and over again. how many people do you think would do that for more then a month when they have to PAY for it? exactly!

[Deleted]

imagine you had to relive the timeframe from your (X)th to your (X+1)th Birthday over and over again. how many people do you think would do that for more then a month when they have to PAY for it? exactly!

So basically the best period in my "teen"? Says no more.

[Meiffert]

Are you stupid ?
There are about 20k CONCURRENT players on A SINGLE private server.

Why are you calling me names for quoting someone else's numbers?

All I'm saying is that "~20k people spread on the different private servers playing daily" won't produce 500k players for classic.

Maybe there are "~20k concurrent players on one of many similar servers" instead, which is fine with me, I don't have the numbers, but it has nothing to do with that statement.

[Deleted]

And how do you think the original WoW players managed ?

I did quote 'casual' players, you saw that right? And then your answer is: "they didn't". Those are the people for whom it took over a year to reach lvl 60 and those are that VAST majority of players who never even saw level 60.

You remind me of the guys who said "it's normal that leveling has become so mindlessly easy, it's to not drive away a new player", while somehow forgetting that we were all new players originally, and we did it just fine.

'we' being the tiny, TINY minority of vanilla players that reach level 60, let alone ever want into a raid? Yeah, I know you might think that's the way to go, but it does not make sense for a company to make a huge game knowing most of it will never be used.

Internet is littered with free games. Even if it's free, you don't spend your time on it if you don't like it.
Also, the "it's free" is a pretty shitty excuse, considering if it were really the attractive point, these same players wouldn't have been the ones lobbying Blizzard for Classic server. Duh. Logic for dummy.

Kind proves the point doesn't it? Vanilla wow has been free to play for years now and still it doesn't attract more than a fraction of what pay to play wow does.

But there is a lot of people (maybe not millions, but at the very least tens of thousands) who will play it for the long run.

That I do agree with.

[potis]

I don't follow your reasoning at all.
There are ~20k players on private servers (sounds reasonable), many of those can't afford/don't want to pay for subscription.
I've played with some friends on a private server years ago and subscription was the sole reason for not playing retail. It's not a lot, but when you are a teenager with no income in a "cheaper" country, even the 13 euro is more than you necessarily want to pay.

So some of those 20k will be willing to pay for a better/more stable experience of official servers and that makes 500k?

Don't get me wrong, no doubt many players will try the classic server for a bit.
But expecting millions of stable long-term players (I know that's not necessarily you, but others in this and other topics) is insanely out of touch. I expect the numbers to be in tens of thousands, which is not bad all things considered (there are other games with that amount of players and they are not some rehashed 15 years old relaunch).

I said daily, which means there are many more, that simply dont log daily, nostralius proved that by having according to the latest reading 250k active accounts for a period of a few months which is why it got so much attention and legally targeted by Blizzard, too many players bro.

Of course some cant afford it, i know those wont play, all i am talking about is the "Tourist mentality" someone else mentioned.

Many people will check it out, most will disappear in less than a few months, giving it up to 6 months, depending how they do their patch cycle.

But the private servers community, spread out all different expansions is much more than "20k daily", which is what i am pointing at.

WoW has around to 6mil active accounts at the moment, they arent all logging on at the same time/day, private servers arent any different, there can be around to as example Lights Hope now, 30k active players, while around 10k log on daily.

I am not claiming some insane number, anywhere between 500k to 2mil people at launch, 2mil is being really open about it but why not, which will die down to a few thousands, probably around anywhere 10-100k after the first few months, depending on the patch cycle.

If they do patch cycles of the original content then it will last longer.

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Do you remember how retarded people were in MC when they re-released it for the anniversary? And that's with modern spells and shit. You have too much confidence in this.

I dont categorize every player the same, the average terrible mouthbreather doesnt count as a player for me.

Just because most will be terrible bads, doesnt mean the better players will take as long as it took us 12 years ago to learn things, everything is already known, there is nothing to discover.

As example, farming dungeons for a tank (Warrior) is retarded when the craftable gear is miles better, the Enchanted Thorium gear as example, took me like 2 days to farm all 3 pieces in July-August 2005, and that was because we rerolled from Alliance to Horde so we restarted at June 2005 despite clearing most of MC as alliance cause we had EQ raiders leadership that knew how the game worked, and by then, 5 months after release i knew how the game worked too, thats why i only mined for a week, crafted my gear, made an easy 1k gold, bought my mount, made another 2k over the next month, by arcane crystals only (Long live the Enh Shamans basically) etc etc.

Game was easy if you had the knowledge, which by now, 12 years after, that knowledge is really easy to find.

[therealbowser]

Yes classic will be succesful.

Your signature fully expresses your bias. Classic will be successful, but it will remain a very large minority of the playerbase (10% of the playerbase would be a very generous estimate, it will probably be far less). That you think it will have 3-4x more players on it is comical.

Unless they take vanilla and add content so that it is a new game (a 100% impossibility), a server with no new content is going to leave players bored and moving on over time. It will never be popular, but it will be played. Sorry.

[Slashnox]

If somebody doesn't like the idea of Classic WoW you can see "it will die out in a month" being that one negative thing they can say about it.

But in reality, those of us who've been waiting to play Vanilla or TBC again since post WOTLK are gonna play our hearts out even if it loses 90% of its playerbase so who the fuck cares.

[Lynkeus]

Pls someone make archive of these threads, I will ask them in a few years to humor myself when I lack material.

Well now that I am thinking, will I ever lack material tough?