What if it fails?

[adamzz]

It's not a question of "what if" it's a question of when.

[RickJamesLich]

Frankly I think people will get bored with retail long before they get bored with classic

[Vineri]

Anyways, I honestly dont see how Classic doesnt fail. Its not going to get new content ever, so why should people keep paying a sub? Lots of the Classic fanboys dont like modern WoW at all so they wont keep up a sub to play it once Classic inevitably gets boring.

And with the sub fee, the Classic fans are already split on if they'll pay because they inexplicably expected it to be free, so the playerbase will already be smaller than the tiny number it was going to be.

Honestly, I wouldnt be surprised if Blizz is only releasing Classic so it can fail and people will shut up about it. With the added bonus being that since they currently have a competitor to them, they can sue to shut down private servers and people cant claim that it doesnt effect them in any way.

If done right it will succeed. I mean, people playing private servers have been doing so for a very long time. New content to Vanilla fans exists in the form of fresh servers. A brand new start from scratch. These happen about every 1-2 years depending of the host. It's actually what players of Vanilla want.

This has been going on long before Mark Kern and his ... server.

In other words, Vanilla fans don't expect new content like you do. They want to compete in a different way. PVP becomes less about how much time you sunk into getting gear, but just how good you really are, with what little you have, for instance. PVE is challenging because you are trying to do the most possible with the least stats and resources. It's a different ball game. There are entire websites devoted to Vanilla min/max, along with all the formulas you never knew existed in various calculations.

So, you saying Vanilla will fail because it doesn't have new content, makes me chuckle. I hope Activision understands its playerbase more than yourself

They already blew it with Diablo fans. Call of Duty fans. Destiny II fans. WoW BFA fans. Below expectations .. well yeah, they changed each game into something uninteresting, took away important features, and incentivized microtransactions .. they need to understand their customers and think of them more than just a vein waiting to be mined

[HordeFanboy]

TIL half the specs in the game being useless in endgame content is somehow perfection.

Anyways, I honestly dont see how Classic doesnt fail. Its not going to get new content ever, so why should people keep paying a sub? Lots of the Classic fanboys dont like modern WoW at all so they wont keep up a sub to play it once Classic inevitably gets boring.

And with the sub fee, the Classic fans are already split on if they'll pay because they inexplicably expected it to be free, so the playerbase will already be smaller than the tiny number it was going to be.

Honestly, I wouldnt be surprised if Blizz is only releasing Classic so it can fail and people will shut up about it. With the added bonus being that since they currently have a competitor to them, they can sue to shut down private servers and people cant claim that it doesnt effect them in any way.

Vanilla is not about specs. Classic is about a very long journey

[last1214]

If it didnt fail on private servers, then it isnt going to fail.

[Deleted]

If it didnt fail on private servers, then it isnt going to fail.

A couple of thousand people playing for free would absolutely represent a failure for a company the size of Blizzard.

[Deleted]

It's the last shred of hope I have for Blizzard at this point. If it fails I guess that's it for me.

[vsb]

What if people are disappointed or get tired of WoW Classic? They stop playing. Then what? For many, this is a last resort. What happens if it fails? Will you be done with Blizzard games?

I personally will just go back to retail. Or play other games.

I'm pretty much disappointed with retail. I may return to it, but I don't really have enough friends there anymore. I'll pay sub, I'll play casually but that's all about it, no more hardcore raiding or dungeoning, because game changed too much and I'm feeling excluded by those changes. I didn't make any new friends in the game for the last few years and old friends are disappearing or playing casually. People are just too diffrent, they are not those nerds I liked to hang with, they are strange "normal" people, they like action game, they don't like roleplaying element. I don't know where those nerds are gone. I was among people who are like me, now I'm among strangers. I used to play for fun and having good progress, now I'm playing like interceptor pilot and I'm struggling to make a good progress. Nobody cared about DPS back then, we had women who chosen gear by its looks and we progressed nonetheless! Now I'm simcrafting stuff every day and I'm struggling to make green logs which is apparently not good enough. That's completely not fun for me.

[Skulltaker]

Vanilla is not about specs. Classic is about a very long journey

A journey you have already completed. You've bought all the souveniers, you have taken all the pictures, sampled all the foods, been to all the sites, visited all locations. You can repeat the journey, of course, but it will never be the same. Ever.

[Deleted]

What if people are disappointed or get tired of WoW Classic? They stop playing. Then what? For many, this is a last resort. What happens if it fails? Will you be done with Blizzard games?

I personally will just go back to retail. Or play other games.

Vanilla classic isnt a last resort. Its Blizzard giving a portion of the playerbase what they have been asking for.

I 'm 99% sure vanilla wont fail but i probably have different metrics to go after then you do. For example i am not expecting classic to hold anywhere NEAR the number of players that retail has. Not even close. Its going to start with a big intake and people will drop off very very fast. THere is a core group of players who are going to be playing it though, thats almost assured.

- - - Updated - - -

Vanilla is not about specs. Classic is about a very long journey

Sure as fuck isnt for me. THe leveling experience needs to be over as fast as possible. I'm only playing classic for the raids.

[Raven]

It didn't fail in 2004; why would it fail now?

There's a good chance hundreds of thousands, if not millions, might try it for their first time in the wow universe.

If Blizz was smart, they would spend some $$$ on marketing and act like it's launching the game for the first time.

Maybe becouse its not 2004 now, its 2018, 2019 by the time the game comes out.

[Deleted]

What if people are disappointed or get tired of WoW Classic? They stop playing. Then what? For many, this is a last resort. What happens if it fails? Will you be done with Blizzard games?

I personally will just go back to retail. Or play other games.

This will inevitably happen. People will either be disappointed with the game, or, if it runs long enough, be bored. If player numbers drop so low, they'll just shut it down.

[vsb]

It can't fail. It just can't.

Simple answer: Classic Vanilla private servers have been successful since, as early as, 2005. Indeed, early ones were built on the Mangos engine and later on most of them were based on TrinityCore. Nevertheless, point is, they've been successful since essentially the beginning of WoW, and they haven't "failed" until now. Blizzard knows this very well, and thus that's the reason they're doing this too now.

Is there healthy private servers which worked for years? Like 5+ years at least. Where people still regularly raid Naxx, etc. I have an impression that private server life is short and private server people just level, finish content and jump onto next server. But I don't have hard data about it. What do you think?

[PaladinBash]

A lot of people are setting it up to be something amazing. I'm just expecting a couple of weeks of fun of nostalgia, backed up by a couple of weeks of time-killing fun during patch cycles and raid downtime. They can't fuck THAT up, right?

I want it to last long enough to get BC and eventually Wrath servers. It's not even nostalgia then, it's playing Ret at its height in Wrath would make me happy again. If I had to just grind ICC and dunk scrubs every week for years I would.

[Pua]

It won't fail. The continued target is going to be very small, and the expectation is likely that the original surge will collapse and then there will be a steady (but small) growth that follows it.

That's what we've seen via the copies, so it's what we can expect with the real thing.

[Cronovey]

The easiest answer is probably the right one: nothing. Even if Classic's release and sustainability somehow bomb entirely, it's being maintained with a sub to the regular game and the regular game is being maintained through the subs of people playing only for Classic. Blizzard did an incredibly smart thing keeping the two linked together because they can report all of it in a single note for earnings and the games will be symbiotic; they'll depend on each other for players, maintenance costs, and longevity. If Classic tanks for some reason, the small and dedicated playerbase that will continue playing it will still probably pay enough to sustain operating and maintenance costs for it and even if it doesn't it'll be propped up by retail WoW and the microtransactions included with new pets and mounts being added regularly enough to not be overwhelming money grabs but still attract whales to spend big bucks on fancy new mounts. Combine that with probably adding server transfers to Classic at some point in the future (which people will use for right or wrong reasons such as guild searching for good players or server hopping for blacklisted player) and potentially even faction transfers at some point and it'll keep itself sustained well enough to justify operating costs at least.

[Kynario]

Is there healthy private servers which worked for years? Like 5+ years at least. Where people still regularly raid Naxx, etc. I have an impression that private server life is short and private server people just level, finish content and jump onto next server. But I don't have hard data about it. What do you think?

Absolutely. I cannot give specific names, due to MoanaLisa's warning, but there is one, still very popular and has been since 2007 -- when The Burning Crusade launched.

Again, I do not support illegal servers, I only mentioned them as an example to make a point that the demand for Classic has not faltered since as early as 2007 when players began to miss the fundamental aspects Vanilla WoW offered and was no longer available.

De facto: ever since Vanilla WoW ended, and official support for it was no longer offered by Blizzard, players have sought either illegal means of playing it again, or like me, have been waiting for the past 11 years for Blizzard to offer an official re-release

[Crudence]

If a decent amount plays it, it will be a success. If it many people play it, they will probably start making tbc and wotlk remakes as well. If no one plays it... Well, then it was a waste for Blizz and they will never do anything similar ever again. However, retail will go on. Those who likes retail will continue with retail. And those that hate retail, probably doesn't have an active sub at the moment anyway. They will without a doubt get a huge increase of subs when classic release and maybe just a few months of that increased sub number pays for the whole classic experiment. Who knows. I think the only way it would be considered a failure would be if no one even tried it... Which we all know won't be the case.

[Rotted]

What if people are disappointed or get tired of WoW Classic? They stop playing. Then what? For many, this is a last resort. What happens if it fails? Will you be done with Blizzard games?

I personally will just go back to retail. Or play other games.

Then it will be the last time ever the playerbase get's a massive request granted.

"We the community want...."
"Lol guys, remember you said that about classic"

[Nerovar]

So siphon away the money needed to recreate TBC, for a BFA expansion that people supporting this project likely don't care about?

As other companies have shown, you can keep throwing money at a problem, and it will never get fixed. If your BFA has stupid design philosophies, you have a bigger beef with the current design team .. not the past one. And additional money isn't going to help. It will help Bobby keep his inflated multi-million dollar salary. 8 figures is alot of thank you's!

I support the early expansions because the game wasn't broken back then. It had bugs but it was a beautiful game, where the individual mattered. I can live with bugs, but not bad design & architect choices.

So I unsubbed years ago because I saw those stupid design philosophies.

I mean, sure... You can keep recreating older stuff but technically you can already get that on a private server. I'd rather see some good new stuff coming in the future. They need to move forward with the game. Is it unrealistic to think that they'll rethink past decisions when they see the popularity of classic? Probably. But one can still dream.