Do you think Classic will Overtake Retail?

[Count Zero]

If Classic launches during a retail lull I could see its initial surge surpassing retail. But that might last a few months at most.

[Wingspan]

I think that initially, Classic will WAY overtake the retail numbers. BFA is supposedly not doing so well anyway... then throw on top of that they are about to enter the typical 2nd year lull-time of an expansion (I know that there is more to come but I am not expecting it to have a huge impact past November or so).

That said, I also believe Classic will be a ghost town in about a year. Depending on how competitive it gets in the beginning, Naxx will be breached by some guild in the first 2 to 4 months (maybe 6 due to the much stingier gearing model of Classic). After that, it will all start sliding downhill. Within a year, nearly everyone left there will have already seen Naxx. Some will stay beyond that point but most will move on.

The real question in my mind is what overall affect it has on retail.

[varren]

If retail continues to be a steaming pile and in bfa/wod quality tier, then yes, easily. If retail were any good then I think it beats classic by a decent amount.

[enigma77]

Retail BFA has fewer than one million players according to warcraftrealms.com and other sites that track player activity. Classic will easily have more players than BFA at first. The question is how it'll look 6 months later.

- - - Updated - - -

I think that initially, Classic will WAY overtake the retail numbers. BFA is supposedly not doing so well anyway... then throw on top of that they are about to enter the typical 2nd year lull-time of an expansion (I know that there is more to come but I am not expecting it to have a huge impact past November or so).

That said, I also believe Classic will be a ghost town in about a year. Depending on how competitive it gets in the beginning, Naxx will be breached by some guild in the first 2 to 4 months (maybe 6 due to the much stingier gearing model of Classic). After that, it will all start sliding downhill. Within a year, nearly everyone left there will have already seen Naxx. Some will stay beyond that point but most will move on.

The real question in my mind is what overall affect it has on retail.

Naxx won't even be out by then..


Phase 1 (Classic Launch)

Molten Core
Onyxia
Maraudon


Phase 2

Dire Maul
Azuregos
Kazzak


Phase 3

Blackwing Lair
Darkmoon Faire
Darkmoon deck drops begin


Phase 4

Zul’Gurub
Green Dragons


Phase 5

Ahn’Qiraj War Effort begins
Ahn’Qiraj raids open when the war effort dictates
Dungeon loot reconfiguration: Tier 0.5 Dungeon gear, Relics, drop rates and location changes


Phase 6

Naxxramas
Scourge Invasion


You think they will release all this content over 4 months?

Dude it will take at least 4 months before BWL is out.

[ID811717]

Retail BFA has fewer than one million players according to warcraftrealms.com and other sites that track player activity.

Raider.io has 2.4M ranked characters in M+ this season. If your claim is true, we can deduce that this season an average player completed an M+ dungeon on more than 2 characters, and very few players exist that never completed an M+ dungeon in this season. /s



Seriously though, explain us how this is possible outside of 50% playerbase having unsubscribed since January.

[enigma77]

Raider.io has 2.4M ranked characters in M+ this season. If your claim is true, we can deduce that this season an average player completed an M+ dungeon on more than 2 characters, and very few players exist that never completed an M+ dungeon in this season. /s



Seriously though, explain us how this is possible outside of 50% playerbase having unsubscribed since January.

Lol, do you realize that there are players who have 15 characters? All it takes is one +2 key on every character over several months.

If you think there are 2.4 million players because there are 2.4 m characters on raider.io I have a bridge in Alaska to sell you.


This is a more accurate look at the actual player numbers: http://www.warcraftrealms.com/census...ervertypeid=-1

Retail WoW is as good as dead. The actual number is most likely slightly higher, as there are some servers that are so dead that no one bothers to run the census addon on them. Imagine that.

[RobertoCarlos]

seems like theres a tonne more interest in vanilla than retail tbh

[Cytraz]

A lot of people LOVE to complain. They sub, they play, yet they come to these forums to complain about the game and how terrible it is. Then Blizzard announces a classic wow server and people go crazy, thinking it is a much better game than retail.

I am sure a few people actually do prefer the game from back then. But I will take a wild guess and say that more than 80% of retail players who NEVER PLAYED vanilla will NOT like the game as it used to be.

Instead of hearing complaints about the azerite system, "not having anything to do" (which isn't even remotely true, you just dislike pushing m+ keys, raiding mythic and playing arena), people will find something else to complain about.

In about two months these forums will be filled with complaints like:

1) Being completely overrun by certain classes in PvP because of imbalance
2) Not being invited to raids because your class is much worse compared to other classes due to imbalance
3) Certain classes being really bad at leveling, and why it will take many, many hours to reach level 60
etc.

What I am saying is, I believe there are some true hardcore vanilla players, players who probably played back then who will actually love this game. But I also believe that most of the current retail playerbase will actually hate vanilla as it was. You have to understand, it really is a much different game compared to live.

I would say that vanilla is much much more about the journey than it is about reaching max level and doing endgame content. You must be prepared to spend a lot of hours dying to 3 mobs, having to drink after every pull, walking on foot until you reach level 40 (and even then you must have gathered enough gold to actually buy the mount, which isn't cheap at all) etc.

But that is what I think made vanilla great back then; the leveling experience was much more engaging, and there was more of a sense of achievement when you hit 50 after being level 49 for X hours. So, to those people thinking about playing vanilla, I would say that you need to understand that while retail is much about reaching max level as fast as possible and doing endgame content, vanilla is also a great deal about the leveling experience.

[Nixiuz]

If fans see Classic as "WoW 2" then there's a possibility of Classic becoming more popular than BFA.

[rda]

Retail BFA has fewer than one million players according to warcraftrealms.com and other sites that track player activity. Classic will easily have more players than BFA at first. The question is how it'll look 6 months later.

You cannot get absolute numbers from player activity tracked on warcraftrealms and nothing else. Player activity is very useful, but you cannot translate it into subs directly, at best you need a proxy. (Estimates for subs are ~2 mil for US+EU combined, erring on the high side, or at least they were that several months ago - things didn't change much seemingly. That's small, but not 1 mil.)

[ID811717]

Lol, do you realize that there are players who have 15 characters? All it takes is one +2 key on every character over several months.

If you think there are 2.4 million players because there are 2.4 m characters on raider.io I have a bridge in Alaska to sell you.


This is a more accurate look at the actual player numbers: http://www.warcraftrealms.com/census...ervertypeid=-1

Retail WoW is as good as dead. The actual number is most likely slightly higher, as there are some servers that are so dead that no one bothers to run the census addon on them. Imagine that.

1. warcraftrealms counts characters, not players.
2. warcraftrealms only displays data about EU and US realms.
3. warcraftrealms depends on volunteers to install their addon, run the scans, and then upload the information to their website.

Let us look at the realm info from warcraftrealms.
EU: http://www.warcraftrealms.com/eu_rea...php?sort=Total (419 red entries, 21 yellow entries, 32 green entries)
US: http://www.warcraftrealms.com/realmstats.php?sort=Total (433 red entries, 14 yellow entries, 23 green entries)

Let's read the description below:

The ratios are color coded as follows. If the number you see is red, then there have been less than 50 data snapshots submitted for this server/faction in the last 30 days. This is BAD and we need more info on those realm/factions! If the number you see is in yellow, then there have been more than 50, but less than 100. This is better, but we really could use more data. If the number is green then there have been more than 100 snapshots submitted in the last 30 days. This is fairly acceptible to give reliable data!

There are 2 realms out of 251 on EU, and 7 realms out of 246 on US that are marked green for both alliance and horde. Assuming the green numbers can be trusted, you just took the character population of 9 realms and claimed it's the worldwide player population of the game.



There are 7 English-speaking realms listed to have "full" population on EU right now (I omit Dentarg as it is connected with Tarren Mill and has low population on its own): Argent Dawn, Draenor, Kazzak, Ravencrest, Silvermoon, Tarren Mill, Twisting Nether.

Kazzak was scanned 2 times alliance-side and 2 times horde-side over the past 30 days. 3691 characters found.
Ravencrest: 3 alliance, 3 horde, 3914 chars found.
Tarren Mill: 3 alliance, 3 horde, 4574 chars found.
Twisting Nether: 3 alliance, 3 horde, 5014 chars found.

Silvermoon: 106 alliance, 60 horde, 54460 chars found.
Argent Dawn: 255 alliance, 49 horde, 55754 chars found.
Draenor: 105 alliance, 143 horde, 67735 chars found.

So one can estimate that 50-60k+ regularly played characters per well-populated realm just fell through the cracks right there.

EU-Draenor is the most populated EU or US realm according to the website, and I would not trust even the statistics for this one. With only 100-255 scans per month, you can find countless casual players who were not online during any of the scans over the past 30 days. Here is a random one: Kzadorkzador-Draenor timed TD+10 on May 9th. The char was last spotted online by warcraftrealms on Apr 23rd, which is more than 30 days ago, so it is not included in the number of characters active over the past 30 days. Finding this char took a couple of random clicks on the 1000th page of raider.io character rankings for EU-Draenor.

As for the people playing 15 characters in M+. For each of them, there are hundreds of casual players who log in 1h per week to play pet battles and who will never get spotted by warcraftrealms and raider.io.

[Feasel]

A lot of people LOVE to complain. They sub, they play, yet they come to these forums to complain about the game and how terrible it is. Then Blizzard announces a classic wow server and people go crazy, thinking it is a much better game than retail.

I am sure a few people actually do prefer the game from back then. But I will take a wild guess and say that more than 80% of retail players who NEVER PLAYED vanilla will NOT like the game as it used to be.

Instead of hearing complaints about the azerite system, "not having anything to do" (which isn't even remotely true, you just dislike pushing m+ keys, raiding mythic and playing arena), people will find something else to complain about.

In about two months these forums will be filled with complaints like:

1) Being completely overrun by certain classes in PvP because of imbalance
2) Not being invited to raids because your class is much worse compared to other classes due to imbalance
3) Certain classes being really bad at leveling, and why it will take many, many hours to reach level 60
etc.

What I am saying is, I believe there are some true hardcore vanilla players, players who probably played back then who will actually love this game. But I also believe that most of the current retail playerbase will actually hate vanilla as it was. You have to understand, it really is a much different game compared to live.

I would say that vanilla is much much more about the journey than it is about reaching max level and doing endgame content. You must be prepared to spend a lot of hours dying to 3 mobs, having to drink after every pull, walking on foot until you reach level 40 (and even then you must have gathered enough gold to actually buy the mount, which isn't cheap at all) etc.

But that is what I think made vanilla great back then; the leveling experience was much more engaging, and there was more of a sense of achievement when you hit 50 after being level 49 for X hours. So, to those people thinking about playing vanilla, I would say that you need to understand that while retail is much about reaching max level as fast as possible and doing endgame content, vanilla is also a great deal about the leveling experience.

This is a great post. Excellent job.

[Lollis]

Lol, do you realize that there are players who have 15 characters? All it takes is one +2 key on every character over several months.

If you think there are 2.4 million players because there are 2.4 m characters on raider.io I have a bridge in Alaska to sell you.


This is a more accurate look at the actual player numbers: http://www.warcraftrealms.com/census...ervertypeid=-1

Retail WoW is as good as dead. The actual number is most likely slightly higher, as there are some servers that are so dead that no one bothers to run the census addon on them. Imagine that.

Yeah, don't use warcraft realms. It hasn't been reliable since like 2010, and that is being generous.
The last time I personally used census mod was in TBC.

Realmpop is far, far more accurate.

[Tweedzz]

I think classic will not overtake retail and will in fact die off due to the subscription fee. Many people who want classic play for free on private servers right now and I think many will quickly lose interest in paying money for nearly the same experience and go back to private servers. It is clear that people don’t remember 1.12 exactly as it was and I suspect some people might actually like the guesswork a lot of private servers have done more than actual 1.12.

Being on the same subscription means the two versions of wow can only help each other, but unfortunately I think it will turn off many who can get the vanilla experience without it.

[Sansnom]

This is a more accurate look at the actual player numbers: http://www.warcraftrealms.com/census...ervertypeid=-1

How is it more accurate? Because it fits your view of the game?

It looks like it requires installation of a mod in order to collect data. Which some do not have. Such as myself. I personally likes to keep the number of mods I use low and useful only. Installing a mod just so some third party site can collect data on me? No thanks.

[niztheundead87]

Retail BFA has fewer than one million players according to warcraftrealms.com and other sites that track player activity. Classic will easily have more players than BFA at first. The question is how it'll look 6 months later.

- - - Updated - - -



Naxx won't even be out by then..


Phase 1 (Classic Launch)

Molten Core
Onyxia
Maraudon


Phase 2

Dire Maul
Azuregos
Kazzak


Phase 3

Blackwing Lair
Darkmoon Faire
Darkmoon deck drops begin


Phase 4

Zul’Gurub
Green Dragons


Phase 5

Ahn’Qiraj War Effort begins
Ahn’Qiraj raids open when the war effort dictates
Dungeon loot reconfiguration: Tier 0.5 Dungeon gear, Relics, drop rates and location changes


Phase 6

Naxxramas
Scourge Invasion


You think they will release all this content over 4 months?

Dude it will take at least 4 months before BWL is out.

not reliable source so you are wrong

[justandulas]

Not only will it dwarf retail wow; I’m gonna make the ballsiest prediction here and say it will actually peak higher than its original peak

Pc gaming is so much bigger and easier to get into than 2004

[Wingspan]

Retail BFA has fewer than one million players according to warcraftrealms.com and other sites that track player activity. Classic will easily have more players than BFA at first. The question is how it'll look 6 months later.

- - - Updated - - -



Naxx won't even be out by then..


Phase 1 (Classic Launch)

Molten Core
Onyxia
Maraudon


Phase 2

Dire Maul
Azuregos
Kazzak


Phase 3

Blackwing Lair
Darkmoon Faire
Darkmoon deck drops begin


Phase 4

Zul’Gurub
Green Dragons


Phase 5

Ahn’Qiraj War Effort begins
Ahn’Qiraj raids open when the war effort dictates
Dungeon loot reconfiguration: Tier 0.5 Dungeon gear, Relics, drop rates and location changes


Phase 6

Naxxramas
Scourge Invasion


You think they will release all this content over 4 months?

Dude it will take at least 4 months before BWL is out.

It was my understanding (so possibly untrue) that Classic launches as one of the last patches, so nearly everything will be available on day one. If so, the only barrier to Naxx is the gear grind... which is considerable but still not crazy (and should be done within 4 to 6 months).


If they gate the content, then sure, it might takes years to even see Naxx.

[Jeina]

It doesn't matter. Blizzard gets paid either way.

[Tweedzz]

It was my understanding (so possibly untrue) that Classic launches as one of the last patches, so nearly everything will be available on day one. If so, the only barrier to Naxx is the gear grind... which is considerable but still not crazy (and should be done within 4 to 6 months).

Yes it launches in the state of patch 1.12 in terms of class balance and itemization, but not in terms of available content. The mentions content phases is how blizzard has officially said it will put out classic content.