Do you think Classic will Overtake Retail?

[clausuk57]

And it won't be the version that took weeks, but the ones without neutral troll graveyard, vastly nerfed NPCs and so on. It wasn't quite the blitz that it eventually turned into, but you're not getting your "dream version".

At least we will have high PvP skill cap like back in the day, so i think its okay.

[Linri]

I think it has the potential to have more people playing classic on a daily basis, and retail on raid days

[KaPe]

At least we will have high PvP skill cap like back in the day, so i think its okay.

That's *highly* debatable. It's not like Vanilla was some dreamland, filled with incredibly skilled players. You were just as likely to have them battle in the mid of WSG, keep losing nodes on Arathi while running around like headless chickens, failing to do anything on AV, "healers" not exisiting and so on. Eeven reaching R14 was more about insane dedication/grind than anything else. Sure, losing 24/7 would not be enough, but that didn't make them masters of PvP.

And if it's about world Pvp... as fun as that was, "skill" isn't exactly the word I'd use there.

[Lurker1]

Doesn't matter to me i play solo anyways and classic is not mostly solo based enough for me hard pass!

[clausuk57]

I didn’t say bfa was superior. But again the facts don’t agree with you which is why blizzard got rid of the old leveling content. Rather the numbers went up after that we don’t know.

Facts do disagree with you. Look at subscriber numbers before and after Cataclysm revamped the leveling experience. And started to make WoW a child's game with no difficulty.

[KaPe]

Facts do disagree with you. Look at subscriber numbers before and after Cataclysm revamped the leveling experience. And started to make WoW a child's game with no difficulty.

You conveniently "forgot" to mention that Cataclysm also increased the difficulty of dungeons to be higher than before. Not exactly "child's game with no difficulty".

[thatmikeguy]

Not really, I think it will be a mess as players trying to do both at the point the next patch comes out. The time investment is not fully realized yet by most players, and they will get left behind if they stop playing. Viewing the streams I'm remembering more things to come, including at 60. I may play as a complete casual eventually, but as a launch player I'm having fun watching these new players discover it.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

Facts do disagree with you. Look at subscriber numbers before and after Cataclysm revamped the leveling experience. And started to make WoW a child's game with no difficulty.

You know that’s not how it works right? You don’t know why sub numbers went down and you don’t know if the levelling changes had any effect at all. We know 70% didn’t get to ten before cata that is a fact any thing after cata is speculation with no grounding in fact.

[clausuk57]

You conveniently "forgot" to mention that Cataclysm also increased the difficulty of dungeons to be higher than before. Not exactly "child's game with no difficulty".

You mean they increased the "NEW" dungeons difficulty, we're are currently discussing people quitting before the level 10 dude.

- - - Updated - - -

You know that’s not how it works right? You don’t know why sub numbers went down and you don’t know if the levelling changes had any effect at all. We know 70% didn’t get to ten before cata that is a fact any thing after cata is speculation with no grounding in fact.

Correct, but you know cataclysm lost more subs than it got right?
What did cataclysm change?
They changed all the core filosofies vanilla is built upon.

Wonder why players began to leave? you have the answer above.

[Jester Joe]

Honestly I doubt it will ever pass retail even in the first week.

That assumes that either it will

A) Get all the retail players to try it, and then some people to come back
or
B) Draw in more people than who are already subbed at the moment.

Honestly I don't think it will do either. Not saying it won't be a success, but I don't think it will be able to grab that many people.

[Duckpower]

I think Classic will surpass Retail when it launches, and for the first 1-1½ month
It'll then stabilize, but it won't deep dive like some predict; Retail will pack a consistently higher amount of players
As each phase releases, it'll gain a huge bump in activity for 1-2 months, before returning to its former number (possibly more, if people love the specific phase)
Overall I think retail will remain larger, but I do also think that people underestimate the market and appeal that Classic brings

[Lorgar Aurelian]

Correct, but you know cataclysm lost more subs than it got right?
What did cataclysm change?
They changed all the core filosofies vanilla is built upon.

Wonder why players began to leave? you have the answer above.

That’s not relevant to what we’re talking about though as again you have no idea if the levelling changes effected any thing or if the number went up or down from 70%.

No one is contesting the sub numbers of cata.

[Celista]

You mean they increased the "NEW" dungeons difficulty, we're are currently discussing people quitting before the level 10 dude.

That is definitely NOT what happened, obviously people quit for different reasons but I remember the endless whining on the forums about how dungeons were too hard and how it would take several hours for a pug to complete a heroic. People quit because they thought the game was TOO HARD, not because it was TOO EASY. The game didn't get back to Wrath-level difficulty until arguably Dragon Soul.

I remember pre-Cata leveling, not sure if they nerfed Vanilla content when they rolled out BC (when I started) but leveling 1-60 was NOT difficult in BC or Wrath prior to Cata.

[nToxik]

No. Nostalgia will be brief.

[WowClassic]

That's *highly* debatable. It's not like Vanilla was some dreamland, filled with incredibly skilled players. You were just as likely to have them battle in the mid of WSG, keep losing nodes on Arathi while running around like headless chickens, failing to do anything on AV, "healers" not exisiting and so on. Eeven reaching R14 was more about insane dedication/grind than anything else. Sure, losing 24/7 would not be enough, but that didn't make them masters of PvP.

And if it's about world Pvp... as fun as that was, "skill" isn't exactly the word I'd use there.

You might want to look up the term skill cap. Just saying

[toffmcsoft]

One of the best things about classic is we know what we're getting and there's a large community of players who want exactly what classic is.

All in all, wow is a sinking ship and has been that way for a long long time.
Blizzard releases new expansions to make profits and that they do.

Classic is most likely going to be the the biggest ROI on a product Blizzard has seen in a long time.
Release a game that already exist and make money off it with limited resource allocation...

I personally see classic drawing 1-2million players.
It would be great to break 5m subs but it's highly unlikely.

The real question is, when is WOW 2 coming out.
We need a new mmo that brings the "community / immersive" feeling that classic has w/ the Retail game mechanics.

[Laerrus]

I don't know. I do know that the hype surrounding Vanilla right now is huge though.

If the current game remains in the state it is in right now through the next expansion, all bets are off the table.

[Lollis]

Facts do disagree with you. Look at subscriber numbers before and after Cataclysm revamped the leveling experience. And started to make WoW a child's game with no difficulty.

You're fucking kidding me right?

People didn't leave because of the levelling change. People left because of the talents reducing your choices and the general raiding/dungeon situation with LFG.

The questing in Cataclysm was superior to Vanilla even if some of the zone changes fucking suck (stupid tornados etc).

TBC came out and the questing was a fucking breath of fresh air compared to Vanilla, but look at the TBC experience now and compare that to any of the subsequent zones and TBC plays like total shit.

I quit in Cataclysm for the first time since starting in Vanilla. It certainly wasn't the levelling that made me quit.

I remember pre-Cata leveling, not sure if they nerfed Vanilla content when they rolled out BC (when I started) but leveling 1-60 was NOT difficult in BC or Wrath prior to Cata.

Vanilla levelling was nerfed in 2.3, and even then it was still a chore, but before then it was just awful, especially compared to TBC which felt amazing at the time.

There was nothing difficult about levelling in Vanilla if you had half a brain cell. For example the sheer number of people that keyboard turned was an embarassment, it was my very first MMO and I was capable of using a mouse to move my character, why is it that so many people could not?

Turning something into a tedius process that takes ages for a variety of reasons (lack of quests, not enough xp from quests, slow moving around zones, having to leave zones for X amount of levels until you can pickup new quests.) That doesn't make the game difficult, it makes it a boring chore.

[Bodonius]

No. Classic dont have the things that make you a addict, no ach no collecting its just nice fun.

[Lollis]

No. Classic dont have the things that make you a addict, no ach no collecting its just nice fun.

Raiding was addictive, ranking up in pvp was addictive, gearing up was addictive. Hell, I even spent hours farming the various whelpling pets. Getting my fishing skill up just so I could summon the fish boss in ZG.

There were a ton of addictive things about Vanilla at the time.