Classic and the possible death of current

[seleri]

"Retail" is still going strong. Classic will have a decent sized dedicated community that genuinely prefers the game as it was then over how it is now, but a lot of people will just be dropping in occasionally for a nostalgia kick. It will never kill off the progressing game.

[Namalia]

I think you overestimate Classic's appeal.

[Protocoaxke]

Classic has a definitive ending. The only way it’ll kill retail is if they start releasing expansions.

Though I reckon retail will kill itself by that point.

While i agree Vanilla does have an "end" I dont think it will be the end of Vanilla.

I see like you point out Progression servers All THE WAY to Wotlk to start . However i also think Vanilla has a very Niche idea behind it, I would not be suprised if Vanilla turned in to a Annual "season" ..Every season you start fresh. I think that style of game play worked great in the ARPG and Vanillas more SANDBOX elements really open up the idea.

[The-loon]

Vanilla is limited and not expanding. You can play it through in a couple of months. People will then want to continue their journey on retail.

Just curious what makes you think this. Classic can easily expand to TBC or go another route IMHO.

[facefist]

I'm a diehard vanilla fan and don't plan to ever play retail again, but I still get surprised at how many people expect vanilla to outshine retail. It will peak at crazy numbers, but expecting it to overtake retail in long term just shows insane bias towards your preferred game... I just hope it's big enough that it would justify making TBC realms

[Trend]

Retail isnt world of warcraft anymore i would consider it more of a collectors game, the players enamored by it are very young kids who dont know better and are ok with microtransactions and in game carries for gold.

Luckily for blizzard people are still having kids, retail isnt going anywhere. For the rest of us, we get classic.

Before someone makes a reply about gold carries always being a thing, yes of course this is true but with the introduction of the WoW token its now part of the culture of the game, i see just as many carry posts in trade chat as i do people selling stuff......quite disgusting if you ask me.

You have a very strange theory. I'm sure there are some kids playing but that is definitely not the norm. And your description of what the game has become is just crazy. Much higher levels of play now than ever before if you do any kind of difficult PvE or PvP. Sure, you can just sit in trade chat and do pet battles and pay for carries, but that is a choice, not inherently what the game is.

It's totally cool that you don't like the modern game, I'm happy for people who don't like modern WoW that Blizzard is giving you Classic. I hope you really enjoy it.

[Fascinate]

You have a very strange theory. I'm sure there are some kids playing but that is definitely not the norm. And your description of what the game has become is just crazy. Much higher levels of play now than ever before if you do any kind of difficult PvE or PvP. Sure, you can just sit in trade chat and do pet battles and pay for carries, but that is a choice, not inherently what the game is.

It's totally cool that you don't like the modern game, I'm happy for people who don't like modern WoW that Blizzard is giving you Classic. I hope you really enjoy it.

Probably worded that wrong, obviously its not just kids just a different sector of people that have become acclimated to the "norms" of gaming today, like microtransactions. These are the people blizzard makes the most money off of and its the people they are going to cater to, the part that bothers me about blizzard above all else is its very clear they used to make the game to be the best mmorpg they could, now they make design decisions to make them the most money.

Greed took over, and thats really all that can be said about that.

As for your raiding and pvp comment, raiding is of course more involved with more mechanics but when the game launched it was never the focus for most players, it was the cherry on top of a beautifully crafted game. Pvp on the other hand i disagree with, arena did not make the game better overall, pvp participation was much much higher in vanilla because it was more accessible. Esports really have no place in an mmo.

[Clozer]

Just curious what makes you think this. Classic can easily expand to TBC or go another route IMHO.

This would exponentially increase the amount of different wow versions. What makes you think that will happen?

[darkfire979]

Majority of the players that will be playing classic won't be coming from current WoW, i suspect the number of players that play both actively will be fairly low. Sure they might dabble in the other wow version since it's free but they will primary focus on the one they came from. (People that are still playing current WoW is unlikely to switch to classic and those that will be playing Classic would not be sub to current WoW anyway).

It'll be a win for blizzard since Classic will bring up (for a while) the number of WoW subs that are not an existing sub.

[Stickiler]

everyone and their mothers will be playing it.

<citation needed>




10 characters

[Akasha64]

I think you overestimate Classic's appeal.

Yeah, I mean for someone who has never played WoW before, how can he know he will prefer classic over modern WoW? He'd have nothing to go on. To such a person without deep understanding of the game, classic and modern WoW are the same thing, it's just WoW. So classic will only appeal to previous WoW players who have an understanding of what the game was like back in vanilla. Not to mention teenagers these days are not the teenagers from back in 2004. The Call of Duty generation is going to place a higher emphasis on graphics, something which WoW has not had at a cutting edge level for 10 years now.

[Charge me Doctor]

Well if your current died you probably should check your generator, or re-charge accumulators.





The only way for classic wow to surpass retail is to start releasing expansions, which will mean "death" of classic wow itself. There will be just two retails.

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Yeah, I mean for someone who has never played WoW before, how can he know he will prefer classic over modern WoW? He'd have nothing to go on. To such a person without deep understanding of the game, classic and modern WoW are the same thing, it's just WoW. So classic will only appeal to previous WoW players who have an understanding of what the game was like back in vanilla. Not to mention teenagers these days are not the teenagers from back in 2004. The Call of Duty generation is going to place a higher emphasis on graphics, something which WoW has not had at a cutting edge level for 10 years now.

And people usually love to dismiss nostalgia argument, but it's a very potent argument. I for one, every year start a new character in starbound out of pure nostalgia, play it up to tier 5 or something while building couple of villages, exploring some planets and stuff, then i burn out of it. The same i expect to be with classic. People will burn out of it, and maybe return couple of months later, because they'll be constantly snatched out of it by MK11 releases, WoW patches and stuff like that.

[Hitei]

Yeah, I mean for someone who has never played WoW before, how can he know he will prefer classic over modern WoW? He'd have nothing to go on. To such a person without deep understanding of the game, classic and modern WoW are the same thing, it's just WoW. So classic will only appeal to previous WoW players who have an understanding of what the game was like back in vanilla. Not to mention teenagers these days are not the teenagers from back in 2004. The Call of Duty generation is going to place a higher emphasis on graphics, something which WoW has not had at a cutting edge level for 10 years now.

"Hurr teenagers these days!" Call of Duty is older than wow, what a stupid post.

[Amerissis]

and since you can only play one game at a time.

Why is that? You can play both, no problem. You could even play them at the actual same time, with two windows open, but you most likely don't mean that. There is of course no reason why you can't play both. I'm sure many of us play more games then just WoW now, too.

[chiddie]

Just curious what makes you think this. Classic can easily expand to TBC or go another route IMHO.

That would be a complete nonsense. Why repeating the same old cycle over and over again?

Classic makes sense because it’s where everything started. Going through all the other expansions again imho is stupid.

[Akasha64]

"Hurr teenagers these days!" Call of Duty is older than wow, what a stupid post.

Ok, but it's not as old as Medal of Honor I always associate Call of Duty with 7th generation of gaming, because that's when it started getting really popular, and really dominated that generation, but indeed existed since the 6th generation of gaming.

[Contego]

I don't remember wow dying when they included diablo 3 in the annual sub. While a different game, it was and is a big time sink. Sure, lots of people went on to play it, but they kept switching between the two games. Communication through battle.net helps on that.

[Toxuvox]

I see Retail WoW coming to the end of it's VERY long life cycle, but I don't think the release of Classic WoW will have anything to do with that. I reckon we'll see 2 more retail WoW expansions, with the final one being a behemoth in terms of content and expansion lifespan. Obviously that's just my opinion/hopes.

As most folks have said, Classic WoW has a niche audience that, for the most part, has no interest in modern WoW. I'd say most modern WoW players will dip toes in the Classic pond, but not much more than that for the most part, preferring to continue with retail progression or whatever.

What will be more interesting is what happens with the IP as a whole next. WC4? WoW2? Something completely new set in the same universe, but not concerning Azeroth? Who knows?

[Dergiab]

There will be a staggered release of content over a period of almost 18months according to Blizzard.

And I would not be surprised to see TBC classic announced at Blizzcon 2020, if Vanilla is a success.

You got some sauce on that 18 months?

[Atherions]

I think classic is going to be quite popular in phase 1-4. I don't think the large consumable grind that goes with aq and naxx is going to attract a large audience. The best way to make people stay all the way through classic would be if they announced TBC with char transfers