[Speculation] Classic WoW will kill retail

[Bonkbonk100]

Classic Wow will be the biggest thing on the internet.. for 8-12 weeks

So like a WoW expansion?

[Morbownz]

I think it will do the opposite. It's potentially 2 games for 1 subscription price increasing the chance players stick around.

[KOUNTERPARTS]

Classic does not stand a chance in "killing" current "retail" WoW.

You forget the mass amount of players that Blizzard caters to now - the "casuals" - ever since the end of WotLK. They won't stop playing retail for a non-casual experience like vanilla WoW was.

Keep dreaming.

[gkai]

Bottom line is people won't know the sub numbers for each game since that data hasn't been released in years. Classic will have their community, retail will have their community, and some will play both. I don't get this polarizing discussion which will be better, which will have more players, at the end of the day it's another person playing Warcraft, which is the end goal for blizzard.

People will come back specifically for classic, while other who played it won’t touch it. I don't get why there needs to be multiple threads about which game which version of the game will be better than the other. Who cares, play the game you like and stop making it such a dick measuring competition.

[Battlebeard]

I don't think it will but I HOPE it will. Legion was such utter garbage and BFA is looking equally bad. Maybe they wake up and make a better retail game if it starts to die.

[wushootaki]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbpgWkPbNc4
Do your research before you start flabbing
6:40 if you wanna skip the discussion of the place itself.
it wasent insanely massive, but it was there.

Again, the winning strategies for each team were different due to the map. Bads will always whine --- as a rogue in classic, the best winning strat for horde was for Horde to bunker down in front of Tower Point...the best choke in the game. You left Snowfall graveyard for Alliance, so they respawned close by, and were thus too far from their base making it too far to ride back. Rogue/Druid stealth teams could easily go across the bridge and take out tower npcs and cap. This forced Alliance to either trinket back and give up their attack, or stay at the choke and lose their towers.

This guy talks about map advantages and fails to point out Horde started nearly halfway up the map for almost a year before being moved down due to winning more games.

He also talks about later on how Horde don't queue, and they don't because once resources were removed, Alliance had direct advantage because the map favors a zerg, rather than playing the game. In a game where a competent Horde team does the winning Horde strat, its very hard for Alliance to win. The problem is, this lasts much longer than zerg games and people are too impatient.

The guy in the video even says, in Reinforcement games --- Horde won, and Alliance whined.

Same video: https://youtu.be/zbpgWkPbNc4?t=1009

This advantage wasn't just during reinforcements though. It was always there, and they could bottleneck it the entire time during classic as well. Utilizing stealthers to take the north. Weird I know. The difference in AV Classic is that once you took the northern towers, you had to march up with your team...whereas with reinforcements you could just stay at the choke til they hit 0.

Edit: Also read the comments, they largely disagree with what he says in the video and confirm what I am saying.

[FelPlague]

Again, the winning strategies for each team were different due to the map. Bads will always whine --- as a rogue in classic, the best winning strat for horde was for Horde to bunker down in front of Tower Point...the best choke in the game. You left Snowfall graveyard for Alliance, so they respawned close by, and were thus too far from their base making it too far to ride back. Rogue/Druid stealth teams could easily go across the bridge and take out tower npcs and cap. This forced Alliance to either trinket back and give up their attack, or stay at the choke and lose their towers.

This guy talks about map advantages and fails to point out Horde started nearly halfway up the map for almost a year before being moved down due to winning more games.

He also talks about later on how Horde don't queue, and they don't because once resources were removed, Alliance had direct advantage because the map favors a zerg, rather than playing the game. In a game where a competent Horde team does the winning Horde strat, its very hard for Alliance to win. The problem is, this lasts much longer than zerg games and people are too impatient.

The guy in the video even says, in Reinforcement games --- Horde won, and Alliance whined.

Same video: https://youtu.be/zbpgWkPbNc4?t=1009

This advantage wasn't just during reinforcements though. It was always there, and they could bottleneck it the entire time during classic as well. Utilizing stealthers to take the north. Weird I know. The difference in AV Classic is that once you took the northern towers, you had to march up with your team...whereas with reinforcements you could just stay at the choke til they hit 0.

Edit: Also read the comments, they largely disagree with what he says in the video and confirm what I am saying.

Even starting half way up the middle graveyard was still closer.
yes when the reinforcements came out, that was not vanilla that was TBC, and that made it unfair because horde had the graveyard advantage.


And again he shows factual evidance in the "most deadly" list, but whatever you wanna beleive man

Factual evidence given by blizzard back when the content was current?
or
your twisted nostalgic beliefs.
what is worth more?

[Molis]

I beleive it to be the other way around. Blizzard will launch Classic WoW and have many people playing in the begining .Then after a month servers will be dead because everyone will realize why live is better.

[wushootaki]

Even starting half way up the middle graveyard was still closer.
yes when the reinforcements came out, that was not vanilla that was TBC, and that made it unfair because horde had the graveyard advantage.


And again he shows factual evidance in the "most deadly" list, but whatever you wanna beleive man

Factual evidence given by blizzard back when the content was current?
or
your twisted nostalgic beliefs.
what is worth more?

Read the comments. Several of them disagree with his classic interpretation. If things were so one-sided, games wouldn't last 6+ hours. His advantages really only started to skew the game once they started messing with the actual game design for win conditions. This made the Alliance map advantages actually favor win conditions.

But his analysis disregards the following facts:

- Horde Land Mines
- Horde having Best Choke Point in game
- Both sides having different win strategies
- Lok being much harder to kite than Ivus due to a shorter leash range from initial spawn point
- Rams being nowhere near towers or Alliance NPCs, while Wolves were in direct line of sight of the Horde base and right next to Horde NPCs that could be aggrod, and thus easy to see and defend when players were spotted
- Balinda also provided a small advantage to the Alliance due to iceblock prolonging the time it took for her death, while Galv just straight out did more damage if you defended/healed him
- The competency of randoms vs. people knowing actual game strats
- Any actual factual statistics representing win ratios, rather than just NPCs that were deadly
- The disparity between gear quality and the fact that Alliance had more players, thus more high-end raiders in quality gear (PvE to PvP back in the day --- as welfare epic pighammer was basically MC gear, and nothing got added beyond that until the PvP revamp)
- The PvP revamp that then promoted players afking for honor, rather than participating in the fights

[FelPlague]

Read the comments. Several of them disagree with his classic interpretation. If things were so one-sided, games wouldn't last 6+ hours. His advantages really only started to skew the game once they started messing with the actual game design for win conditions. This made the Alliance map advantages actually favor win conditions.

But his analysis disregards the following facts:

- Horde Land Mines
- Horde having Best Choke Point in game
- Both sides having different win strategies
- Lok being much harder to kite than Ivus due to a shorter leash range from initial spawn point
- Rams being nowhere near towers or Alliance NPCs, while Wolves were in direct line of sight of the Horde base and right next to Horde NPCs that could be aggrod, and thus easy to see and defend when players were spotted
- Balinda also provided a small advantage to the Alliance due to iceblock prolonging the time it took for her death, while Galv just straight out did more damage if you defended/healed him
- The competency of randoms vs. people knowing actual game strats
- Any actual factual statistics representing win ratios, rather than just NPCs that were deadly
- The disparity between gear quality and the fact that Alliance had more players, thus more high-end raiders in quality gear (PvE to PvP back in the day --- as welfare epic pighammer was basically MC gear, and nothing got added beyond that until the PvP revamp)
- The PvP revamp that then promoted players afking for honor, rather than participating in the fights

if things were so one sided games still would last 6+ hours, but most of those would end after 6 hours in the alliance winning.
again if you want to provide any evidance for this stuff, if you want to for example make ANY CLAIM on how possibly it makes sense all the horde bosses have far more then the alliance, and the alliance bridge archers have even higher.
Please stop giving your horrid excused and provide evidence like i have.

also horde having best choke point? no, no they did not until BC.

[wushootaki]

if things were so one sided games still would last 6+ hours, but most of those would end after 6 hours in the alliance winning.
again if you want to provide any evidance for this stuff, if you want to for example make ANY CLAIM on how possibly it makes sense all the horde bosses have far more then the alliance, and the alliance bridge archers have even higher.
Please stop giving your horrid excused and provide evidence like i have.

also horde having best choke point? no, no they did not until BC.

Most games ended, because generally after 6 hours people have to leave. The alliance having more players in classic is a direct advantage. More players on your side --- you can field the game longer. Do remember, Battlegroups didn't exist at first and you were operating just with your server. This changed shortly after the release of BGs.

https://wow.gamepedia.com/Battleground

"WoW Icon update.png Patch 1.5.0 (2005-06-07): Alterac Valley and Warsong Gulch added."

"WoW Icon update.png Patch 1.12.0 (2006-08-22):
For the first time in the history of World of Warcraft, you will be able to face off against players from other realms in the Battlegrounds. PvP Battlegrounds link Alterac Valley, Warsong Gulch, and Arathi Basin so that players from several realms will be combined into one huge matchmaking pool. Replenish your mana, sharpen your blades, and get ready for some brand-new challengers!
In order to whisper a player from another server in your battleground you must append "-Servername" to the end of their name. These whispers will not show up on your screen, but will show up on theirs.
Conjured items are the only type of items that can be traded to players from another server (anything else will give an error message).
When you join a battleground, you are automatically added to a raid group. You MAY NOT leave that group. To speak in this raid, use /bg instead of /ra.
Leadership of the battleground raid is granted to whomever has the highest PvP rank when the raid is formed (approximately 1 minute before the battleground starts).
You may be in a battleground group and a regular group at once, but the battleground group will be the one you see in the party frame as well as the raid tab."


That's over an entire year of dealing with only your server, where if you were outnumbered in population, after long games...yes chances were you'd lose when people have to go to bed. This same phenomena could be seen in DaoC, and as recently as GW2 where serveres attempted recruiting Oceanic guilds for the simple reason that people need to sleep/work at different time zones and can't be in the battle 24/7.

As for Horde having the best choke point. Yes, They did. The video you pointed out even states they did. People who knew it always existed used it. It was largely made more known once resources were added, because you could finish the game without a stealth team operation, and just sit at the choke. But the choke point was always there. The addition of reinforcements or changes to Alterac Valley didn't alter this choke point in any way. Which again, in the video YOU posted, states its the strongest in the game.

https://www.engadget.com/2007/07/17/...an-go-afk-now/

https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...ned-blue-posts


Also, the lack of Horde defending their chokepoint, which 100% wins games is even a meme for Horde players.

https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comment...lterac_valley/

[FelPlague]

Most games ended, because generally after 6 hours people have to leave. The alliance having more players in classic is a direct advantage. More players on your side --- you can field the game longer. Do remember, Battlegroups didn't exist at first and you were operating just with your server. This changed shortly after the release of BGs.

https://wow.gamepedia.com/Battleground

"WoW Icon update.png Patch 1.5.0 (2005-06-07): Alterac Valley and Warsong Gulch added."

"WoW Icon update.png Patch 1.12.0 (2006-08-22):
For the first time in the history of World of Warcraft, you will be able to face off against players from other realms in the Battlegrounds. PvP Battlegrounds link Alterac Valley, Warsong Gulch, and Arathi Basin so that players from several realms will be combined into one huge matchmaking pool. Replenish your mana, sharpen your blades, and get ready for some brand-new challengers!
In order to whisper a player from another server in your battleground you must append "-Servername" to the end of their name. These whispers will not show up on your screen, but will show up on theirs.
Conjured items are the only type of items that can be traded to players from another server (anything else will give an error message).
When you join a battleground, you are automatically added to a raid group. You MAY NOT leave that group. To speak in this raid, use /bg instead of /ra.
Leadership of the battleground raid is granted to whomever has the highest PvP rank when the raid is formed (approximately 1 minute before the battleground starts).
You may be in a battleground group and a regular group at once, but the battleground group will be the one you see in the party frame as well as the raid tab."


That's over an entire year of dealing with only your server, where if you were outnumbered in population, after long games...yes chances were you'd lose when people have to go to bed. This same phenomena could be seen in DaoC, and as recently as GW2 where serveres attempted recruiting Oceanic guilds for the simple reason that people need to sleep/work at different time zones and can't be in the battle 24/7.

As for Horde having the best choke point. Yes, They did. The video you pointed out even states they did. People who knew it always existed used it. It was largely made more known once resources were added, because you could finish the game without a stealth team operation, and just sit at the choke. But the choke point was always there. The addition of reinforcements or changes to Alterac Valley didn't alter this choke point in any way. Which again, in the video YOU posted, states its the strongest in the game.

1. the video points out THEY DID NOT until Burning crusade.
2. again no evidance, nothing you show here is evidance at all "its cause there was few horde" well show your proof buddy.

[munkeyinorbit]

Coming to Wow from Everquest... we used to mock the shit out of Wow for being easy as fuck.. No more waiting 6, 7, 8 days straight with multiple people waiting for a epic quest mob to spawn...

Dying in some games (not Wow) had consequences... you had to run back to your corpse naked to get your shit back, sometimes you even lost experience and couldn't re-equip all your gear if you lost your level from dying...

None of that with Wow.

OP is obviously doesn't know what he's talking about.

You use to lose experience in WoW when you died and it was possible to double die in WoW. I don't what it was like in other games as i didn't play that many, but durability is WoW's equivalent of losing gear. Not as harsh I agree, but there were gear consequences.

[shagrax]

That's the real reason why Blizz has admitted they're nervous about releasing classic, and why they were so reluctant to do so for so long. A few reasons: in retail they've pruned so many abilities thus simplified the game into oblivion, everything outside of mythic raiding is zerg mode, leveling is a complete joke, transmog reduces the prestige of new gear, gear upgrades are made obsolete within a few months, world pvp has been killed off, and worst of all: pre-set stat templates in pvp (are you kidding me?). FPS games have more mmo appeal whereas pvp is concerned. There's a very real possibility that when they release classic, the playerbase will perceive classic as the "hardcore" version of the game and retail as carebear mode. Players don't enjoy the feeling that they're playing a watered down version of the real game. Major Twitch streamers will flock to classic and its appeal will skyrocket. Blizzard is very afraid of the specter that all their "improvements" to the game over time will have made it less popular than a game that came out 15 years ago. They'll have to do some serious explaining to shareholders who see retail plunging in popularity. Likewise, that's also why they're currently so coy about giving updates on classic. They know that doing so will detract hype from the upcoming expansion, because classic outshines modern WoW.

lol

/ten characters

[Jeldoba]

You know this because your father's brother's nephew's cousin's former roommate works at Blizzard and told you?

So what does that make us?

- - - Updated - - -

Coming to Wow from Everquest... we used to mock the shit out of Wow for being easy as fuck.. No more waiting 6, 7, 8 days straight with multiple people waiting for a epic quest mob to spawn...

Dying in some games (not Wow) had consequences... you had to run back to your corpse naked to get your shit back, sometimes you even lost experience and couldn't re-equip all your gear if you lost your level from dying...

None of that with Wow.

OP is obviously doesn't know what he's talking about.

don't forget corpse rotting. just imagine the outrage in WoW if after you died, there was a risk of losing all your gear

[PogChamp]

retail won't die, but neither will classic, but when classic comes out it will definitely have more active players than retail for at least a month. after the first month you will see the players who are tired of getting ganked or tired of not being max level yet quit and slink back to retail, they'll have an excuse ready, but deep down they'll know that it was because they couldn't hang in a real mmo.

a year or so after classic is out retail SHOULD have more subs and be doing better overall, but classic will still have a really healthy number of players and those players will likely also still be playing it a year after that. the classic community will likely end up smaller, but much more dedicated and much more loyal to the game.

so pick your side, play casually and get rewards for logging in once a week, or play a real mmo and try to make it in a ruthless world of people who just want you dead. and no that wasn't sarcasm, the current game is doable by doing your 1 m+ a week and with raid tiers gone you can play 2-3 hours a week and keep up. if you tried that in vanilla you wouldn't hit 60 for about a year.

[wushootaki]

1. the video points out THEY DID NOT until Burning crusade.
2. again no evidance, nothing you show here is evidance at all "its cause there was few horde" well show your proof buddy.

I showed it to you. Read the comments of your own video. I'm not gonna scroll through and copy every single one that disagrees with the video. And the video points out Horde didn't use the stategy en masse until then. Nothing about the choke point changed. The design of the game forced more players to use it, once the focus changed to a race.

The strategy was always there. Its shown by the fact that none of the map changes in your video, or that existed, impacted either choke point. Alliance still had the bridge. Horde still had both Iceblood and The entrance to Frostwolf.

If you need proof that the chokepoint existed before the game got nerfed to shit:

http://vanilla-wow.wikia.com/wiki/Al...tical_overview

Here's a list of every advantage and disadvantage shown in the game, with an analysis of perceived advantages and imbalances, with how changes to the map and game impacted them.

"Icewing bunker
Because it is situated right next to the only path into and out of Alliance territory, whoever controls IWB controls the pass. In most games the Alliance won't leave any defenders, making it an easy take for the Horde who can hold off a squad of Alliance players with just a couple RDPS in the windows. Were the Alliance to leave defenders here, they could rather effectively bottleneck the Horde and prevent them from moving onwards."

[FelPlague]

I showed it to you. Read the comments of your own video. I'm not gonna scroll through and copy every single one that disagrees with the video. And the video points out Horde didn't use the stategy en masse until then. Nothing about the choke point changed. The design of the game forced more players to use it, once the focus changed to a race.

The strategy was always there. Its shown by the fact that none of the map changes in your video, or that existed, impacted either choke point. Alliance still had the bridge. Horde still had both Iceblood and The entrance to Frostwolf.

If you need proof that the chokepoint existed before the game got nerfed to shit:

http://vanilla-wow.wikia.com/wiki/Al...tical_overview

Here's a list of every advantage and disadvantage shown in the game, with an analysis of perceived advantages and imbalances, with how changes to the map and game impacted them.

It is not my video, and im not going to read the comments, a few nostalgic people does not beat blizzards factual numbers.

by your logic because flat earthers exist means the flat earth is real.



Again you have yet to prove at all how blizzards numbers are wrong.

[Jeldoba]

Back then.

People know wtf to do now.

You think people won't find optimal ways to do it. Back then nobody had the big tools or methods available to. Now we do.

Considering C'thun went down the day it was fixed that will be done in no time so people will have AQ on farm when it's out.

The content will not last as long as it did back then and thinking so is delusional at best.

As is thinking Classic will kill retail so consider this the only response I'll give you.

not only that. but other games that have done similar, (use EQ progression locked servers as examples) People complete the content, then don't play. while plat farmers for Daybreaks "wow tokens" clog up the economy and farm everything. then the company releases a new server and it just rinse repeats. difference is they changed the rules of those servers to try something "interesting" yet its just the same shit different day. I've expected the same to occur with classic. especially if it's tied to battle net. Now, gold won't be as readily available. but the gouging is going to be intense. Krol blade I'm lookin at you.

[AwkwardSquirtle]

There's a very real possibility that when they release classic, the playerbase will perceive classic as the "hardcore" version of the game and retail as carebear mode. Players don't enjoy the feeling that they're playing a watered down version of the real game.

Lucifron, (the first raid boss in Vanilla) had 2 mechanics. Two dispells and a decurse.
Nythendra, the first boss of Legion, on Normal difficulty, has a breath attack, an ability that does aoe damage around the player and spawns pools, an ability where the tank has to move far away from the raid, and a phase where the pools are drawn towards her and aoe damage pops up in random places around the room.

One of these is carebear easy mode. It's not Legion.