worried that I am the ONLY one to address this issue with classic servers.

[Aggrophobic]

Vanilla was the most time demanding era in WoW by a long shot. whether it was levelling or gearing or raiding.

people who played vanilla are older now and unless something has gone wrong with their ambitions/achievements in life, they will not have the time to put into classic wow what is needed to be able to actually enjoy some success with it.


newer players have enjoyed important quality of life changes with the game and their class. they have never known WoW without these.

heres a simpler example so users on the forum can follow

assume someone has never played video games on any console. Give them a ps4 to play with and then swap it with a ps1. they will not have a good time because there is a distinct difference in quality across all aspects.


Classic servers will struggle because the newer players(which is the VAST MAJORITY) do not share the 'nostalgia' effect and will not enjoy a clunkier, more tedious, less involved WoW then they have been used to the past few xpacs.

the players who want classic servers mainly because they think it gives them some higher status than others or because of 'nostalgia' are not enough to regard classic servers as successful and therefore will not last long after release.

Sorry.

Yes and that is why Blizzard did not want these servers and why it's still a bad idea.
If you change the game then it's not the vanilla that people wanted but if you do nothing that people will quickly realize that vanilla is slow and has very little, actual content.

Whatever Blizzard does here, people will get upset about it. It's like a lose-lose situation.

[Doomchicken]

I rest my case.

- - - Updated - - -

Full statistics:

https://en.nostalrius.org/medias/infographic.jpg

yeah, 800,000 accounts created, 150k active by the end, for a FREE game. I'm not exactly sure that's a positive thing really.

[Saluna]

Yes and that is why Blizzard did not want these servers and why it's still a bad idea.
If you change the game then it's not the vanilla that people wanted but if you do nothing that people will quickly realize that vanilla is slow and has very little, actual content.

Whatever Blizzard does here, people will get upset about it. It's like a lose-lose situation.

100% agree with you. The Vanilla server is, to me, a bad idea that will leave both side of people sour. The nostalgia wont be there because gosh, there is over 14 years of difference. We grew acustomed to a lot of things that nowadays are calculated norm...

Same as if we would want to relieve the 90s .... Eh boy would it be a hit for many of us. No cellphone, no text message, no social media to keep track of your friends... very limited internet :O Nostalgia is a weird feeling!

[Soon-TM]

yeah, 800,000 accounts created, 150k active by the end, for a FREE game. I'm not exactly sure that's a positive thing really.

It happens with all sorts of games, retail WoW included. If anything with the latter is worse, because you are actually shelling out the price of an AAA game just to try it a couple of months. How many active players are there for an xpac launch and how many are there 3/4 months in? Add the fact that pservers have always had this stigma around them, so the numbers look quite reasonable.

[Deleted]

I have to agree with OPs thoughts on this...

But seeing as there is no information on this matter, and Blizzard prob. won´t make statements on what version of "Classic" they are gonna roll with - We can´t make any assumptions just yet.

Imo. We cant discuss this matter before we have some proof of what we will actually get.
(But that doesn´t stop people it seems)

[Doctor Funkenstein]

No what you said is complete and utter baseless garbage that is born out of extreme and willful ignorance. Your point, if you are feeling generous enough to say that you had one, was that there isn't a market for a vanilla server.

Again, not what I said. At all. You're the one who is acting out of "extreme and willful ignorance" by thinking even a noteworthy percentage of the "10s of thousands of players" on the 100% free third party servers are going to pay Blizzard money to play on theirs, especially since it'll be even easier for those shitty third-party servers to duplicate the new code and offer it up for free again.

That's you living in denial, bub. You.

[Radaney]

And yet OSRS, has more players than RS3.

[Morssoe]

I don't know why ppl got this in their head that problem would be players who play for "nostalgia". Those ppl didn't even fight for vanilla. It is the existing private server population. Nostalgia cunts can have their 1-10 run and quit, I don't care. That is probably 1% of real vanilla pop.

[Doomchicken]

It happens with all sorts of games, retail WoW included. If anything with the latter is worse, because you are actually shelling out the price of an AAA game just to try it a couple of months. How many active players are there for an xpac launch and how many are there 3/4 months in? Add the fact that pservers have always had this stigma around them, so the numbers look quite reasonable.

I would argue the opposite. These servers are "supposed" to give the people whom play it the "experience" they apparently wanted for literally free so there's no economic downside to it and it can't even keep more than 20 percent of players after a year? That's a pretty shitty upkeep.

[RickJamesLich]

IMO with vanilla wow, once you hit 60 and complete your gear set from the dungeons, you really only have to worry about making it to raid nights (one or two times a week) and then setting aside one day for grinding gold for consumables. This goes for serious players even, outside of grinding honor of course, but almost no class needs to grind pvp sets to do well in pve. And yes on those raid nights, you are playing for 3 to 4 hours.... most people don't really have a problem with that, when you play an MMO you kind of expect it.

Even for the non-serious players (of which there were *many* on private servers).... you don't really have to no life it at any point if you don't feel like it. A lot of the traps like daily quest and daily dungeons from retail weren't in vanilla.

[Soon-TM]

I would argue the opposite. These servers are "supposed" to give the people whom play it the "experience" they apparently wanted for literally free so there's no economic downside to it and it can't even keep more than 20 percent of players after a year? That's a pretty shitty upkeep.

It is likely to happen in the official (paid ofc) Classic servers as well, and according to Brack, they are fine with it.

[Sting]

yeah, 800,000 accounts created, 150k active by the end, for a FREE game. I'm not exactly sure that's a positive thing really.

"Lies, damned lies and statistics." It's easy to throw out a bunch of numbers and make them sound impressive to people with no context.

-No definition for active accounts. Active last week, month, year?
-What does 30 people on the original warcraft RTS have to do with a blackflag private server? There were 30 people in my preschool class, bam slap it on there.
-How many unique visitors the site gets every month is more interesting than the absolute numbers
-Not quite sure how impressive the last point is tbh when its already filtered by a category, I have no reference point for this one

Not to diminish their work, I just find the whole poster thing quite amusing.

[Doomchicken]

It is likely to happen in the official (paid ofc) Classic servers as well, and according to Brack, they are fine with it.

More power to them I guess.

[Marakesh]

This is so arrogant and condescending on several levels. Ordinarily, you'd think someone wouldn't need to apologize at the end of their post, but you really did. None of these arguments are new, you aren't the first person to throw this stuff out there, you could have just scrolled down the forum and found 50 million versions of it.

Millennials are so self centered. I remember vanilla and TBC WoW having a median age of 27. I recall most raid guilds had a minimum age of 18 and even that was iffy. Actually, that's a mistake to lump all millennials together. The ones paying Blizzard records amounts per person to keep retail WoW that profitable probably are a different breed than all the others in their generation that couldn't afford any sub based games due to GFC and its aftermath. The real question is, if young people get old, there are still new young people coming up in the world, and why is it you can't seel your product to them? There's one part of the answer above, but I gotta say, over the years you see some brands able to keep getting the young generation and some that fade and die.

It took me 3 months to hit 60 the first time and it might take longer this go around even with better knowledge. I'm in no rush. The only thing that might require more time is raiding or high pvp titles. Except the same people that argue raids like MC will be cleared in 30 minutes are the same ones talking about vanilla taking too much time. Odd that. I'd be willing to bet most people don't care about raiding either way. The only thing that might be relevant here is dungeons. You will have to have a bigger time block set aside to do those, even if its not necessarily more time overall.

[Marema]

I don't have nearly as much time to play as I did in vanilla but I'm very much looking forward to getting onto classic.

After leveling several toons to max and never complaining about how fast or easy it is now-a-days, the current state no longer is enjoyable for me. I've started playing on one of those servers we're not supposed to talk about and I'm having a blast. It will probably take me a couple of months to get to 60 but that is completely fine!

[Dergiab]

The entire reason I enjoy it so much, is exactly because of the slower pace. You say it's a problem that the game requires time, I fucking dig it.

Amen to that.

[tipsoutbaby]

You can enjoy Classic casually. It's a huge misconception that you cannot. Will you be able to raid at the highest level? Probably not, but who cares. The game is fun regardless.

[Taeldorian]

Newer players will play vanilla. Everyone will play. And majority will stay on classic.

Sorry.

Very wrong. Even those who want classic servers say this is wrong. Asmongold doesn’t expect a lot to stay, only the core community that consists of the 10-20k or so people on private realms.

Obviously your signature shows your insane bias though so it’s not like you’d listen to facts if presented with them anyway.

I want classic, I think it’ll be great for the game as a whole and I love WoW, not just legion and not just classic.

You’re one of those really weird spazstic people that decide to shit on one part of WoW completely and love the other blindly though so I’d wager on your statement being wrong just based on that.

[hulkgor]

The multiple 10s of thousands if not more people who play on private servers and would gladly pay for quality vanilla by blizzard whole heartedly disagree.

This entirely.

[bash the fash]

I rest my case.

- - - Updated - - -

Full statistics:

https://en.nostalrius.org/medias/infographic.jpg

Less than 20% player retention? On a free private server? That's not very promising.