Classic will have 10 Million Players...

[FelPlague]

You’re so dishonest, or you don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m going to assume it’s a bit of both bot mostly the latter, as I can tell your phone autocorrected RuneScape to run escape, which tells me you don’t actually follow what goes on.

If you did you’d know that OSRS overtook the population majority far before mobile was ever a thing. It was in a lengthy beta process that for the most part was a closed beta. More than that, only open to Android. The iPhone beta existed but was much smaller than Android’s.

Now, OSRS is hugely popular because they can play the attentive parts at home on their computer, and the more afk parts out and about living their daily lives.

Shame on you.

I was corrected, it got ahead before mobile, but when mobile came out the population on OSRS more then doubled its population.

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I mean an older version of a game getting above the current version of the game is destroyed. it literally proves that the development that you have put into the game has only harmed the game.

also claiming RS3 no longer was being supported is just a false claim and I think you know that yourself, although i understand the sentiment that development was definitely removed from RS3 and straight up moved to OSRS

and i dont disagree with the extreme potency of a Mobile release, as i stated, Im interested in how it beat RS3 previous to the mobile release, if the only reason it is surpassing RS3 is cuz of the mobile release. that is pretty paradoxical.

The question of Bots is hard to deal with in an objective matter, But I absolutely agree with that will impact the numbers, and the discussion is towards how much it impacted, from having played both though, OSRS fairly quickly got to the point where it (100% Anecdotal evidence) seemed like there was way more players around me on OSRS than on RS3, but again, multiple things can cause that.


So yeah, I consider it Destroyed, absolutely fucking rekt, 360 noscoped and pooped on. but that is a subjective interpretation I guess.

out of curiousity, what is ur source on OSRS beating RS3 after 3 years?

"Older version of game getting abover new one destroyed" i wouldnt call it that, atleast until mobile released and as you can see on that chart it got... very obvious.

"No longer supported" did some research onto it more after talking to some friends who still play rs3 and osrs and yeah it wsas still supported but less then usual, also RS3 had hit a point of no return, with literal pay to win mechanics, a literal slot machine on the store that cost real money...

aswell as others.

"Mobile release" yes it did pass before but as you can see it got... insane when mobile came out, more then doubling.

"Bots" yes its hard to tell bots exact numbers, but as someone who still plays osrs, yeah bots are still pretty common, so much that the devs of runescape do streams where the mass murder bots

"destroyed" nah i wouldnt call it destroyed until the mobile launch, as you can see in the hart, that is when it became just... so bad

"beating rs3 after 3 years" again the chart above.
end of 2012 to mid 2015 osrs was blow rs3, then from then till start of 2017 they were neck in neck, and then from then on osrs took ahead.

(For reference)
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It sounded like it got off track of my original idea and was worried about it. People are starting to try to refine the numbers down to hard data and then others are refuting it so I thought it best to be more general and say that we can clearly see when overall traffic swells on this forum which would be a good sign for classic.

it does point to less, as right now is the perfect time for classic players to be chatting, cause... they cant play right now, so now is the time. once it goes live it will be obvious much less people will chat because they will be busy playing and talking ingame. so if its only 200 people right now ,thats assuming only 0.005% of the players who will be on classic wow are talking on the forums. and i can garuntee you alot of people here are people who wont be playing and are just here to read/laugh/troll

[Nachtigal]

I was corrected, it got ahead before mobile, but when mobile came out the population on OSRS more then doubled its population.

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"Older version of game getting abover new one destroyed" i wouldnt call it that, atleast until mobile released and as you can see on that chart it got... very obvious.

"No longer supported" did some research onto it more after talking to some friends who still play rs3 and osrs and yeah it wsas still supported but less then usual, also RS3 had hit a point of no return, with literal pay to win mechanics, a literal slot machine on the store that cost real money...

aswell as others.

"Mobile release" yes it did pass before but as you can see it got... insane when mobile came out, more then doubling.

"Bots" yes its hard to tell bots exact numbers, but as someone who still plays osrs, yeah bots are still pretty common, so much that the devs of runescape do streams where the mass murder bots

"destroyed" nah i wouldnt call it destroyed until the mobile launch, as you can see in the hart, that is when it became just... so bad

"beating rs3 after 3 years" again the chart above.
end of 2012 to mid 2015 osrs was blow rs3, then from then till start of 2017 they were neck in neck, and then from then on osrs took ahead.

(For reference)
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it does point to less, as right now is the perfect time for classic players to be chatting, cause... they cant play right now, so now is the time. once it goes live it will be obvious much less people will chat because they will be busy playing and talking ingame. so if its only 200 people right now ,thats assuming only 0.005% of the players who will be on classic wow are talking on the forums. and i can garuntee you alot of people here are people who wont be playing and are just here to read/laugh/troll

I agree, a few thousand, maybe tens of thousands, joined the game because of mobile. But what you’re failing to see is that mobile allowed more people who were already subscribed to be online more often, thus making it appear the way you’re interpreting it.

OSRS mobile is a nice tool to get the mundane tasks out of the way while you’re busy IRL with something that doesn’t require your complete attention. As far as end game combat is concerned, which is the goal for most players, it is not an easily accomplished feat. You’d require swift, precise taps on the screen far too often to be efficient by any measure of the word.

As far as people talking about it is concerned, we’ve always been the minority. Most people don’t care to debate things over the internet, they just go about their day. They either enjoy what they’re doing or they don’t. It is hard to judge. At the end of the day, there’s no reason for bystanders to step in and ruin the parade. If it fails, it fails. Such is life, it goes on. Don’t try and play the hero card, nay sayers just want the opportunity to say I told you so. I wonder why that is?

[unbound]

Since Classic is going to have Millions more players than Retail, shouldn't it be "You pay the Classic subscription, you get Retail for free"?

Instead of the other way around?

Every World of Warcraft Expansion since Cataclysm sees 10 million subscribers at Launch...yes, even Warlords of Draenor.

The Classic Beta was destroying Retail on Twitch, so much so, that - just today - Twitch changed the World of Warcraft logo from "Battle for Nobody cares about this expansion" to the Classic logo with Ragnaros in the background.

Even Google Trends confirms this, if you compare "Classic Wow" to "BFA", Retail is dead, and Classic is on the ascent.

So where does this leave us?

Classic, given the fact it is a game that everyone wants, given that just a level 40 Beta was destroying the current game, given that most World of Warcraft launches attract 10 Million subscribers...I am going to make this prediction now...

Classic will have 10 Millioon subscribers...on day 1.

No, it won't. I do think Classic will spend many months, and possibly the remaining of BfA having more players, but it won't be by virtue of starting at 10 million.

Classic will likely start with 2 to 4 million new players and about 1 million of BfA players...and then settle down to 1.5 to 2 million for most of the next year (which will be higher than BfA during that time).

As for Google Trends, upcoming games *always* trend high due to hype just before and shortly after launch. Things will settle down once it is a reality.

[HCLM]

No since classic is just a dead repeat.
and 10 mill subs? even vanilla NEVER had 10mill subs and you belive classic for 13 bucks a month with its awful grinds will have 10mill subs?
I am gonna laugh so hard when 2 month after launch the qq threads will pop up:
"classic is too grindy", "cant find grps" etc

FTFY

/10chars

No, it won't. I do think Classic will spend many months, and possibly the remaining of BfA having more players, but it won't be by virtue of starting at 10 million.

Classic will likely start with 2 to 4 million new players and about 1 million of BfA players...and then settle down to 1.5 to 2 million for most of the next year (which will be higher than BfA during that time).

As for Google Trends, upcoming games *always* trend high due to hype just before and shortly after launch. Things will settle down once it is a reality.

Vanilla may have more players for 2 first weeks, maybe a month. But no longer. All influencers are playing Retail, and even if many of them were planning to play on Vanilla their community want to watch Retail.

Also all competitive players will stay on retail so they wont fall behind while playing Vanilla.

Vanilla still will be a nice side product that you can launch while there is nothing more to do on Retail. That is all.

[Dch48]

I see Classic starting out with about half of the retail crowd giving it a try and some people from private servers. There will probably be a small amount of people who quit the game that will come back for a while but not very many. In my guild on retail, only about 1/3 of the people are going to try it. There is no way it will have 10 million players at launch or at any other time after that. It might peak at 3 million and then fade away.

[outflow]

Maybe at the start. I think it will go something like this.

[Snackpack]

Classic haters are all pathetic pedestrians who are afraid to lose their meaningless "achievements" on retail.

Classic is objectively a much much better game than the retail abomination.

You can support Classic and still be a realist. 10 million is not realistic.

[Coldfrostzero]

If beta was any real indicator, once the content is gone, so are the people. The PVP server was nearly empty the last month of beta after everyone had hit 40. Once the content is consumed, people will treat it like retail where they will not log in until the next phase. Once all the phases are out, I don't think we'll see a big retention of players.

[llewllew]

The whole notion of "Classic vs. live" is just silly. It's all one sub, and that's the bottom line. It's literally monetizing old content for a trivial investment of time and infrastructure on their end.

It's brilliant. They can use something they've already made -- and absolutely will not have to develop new content for, because that's the whole point -- to make new money. It's rent-seeking par excellence.

[Twdft]

We will never get real sub numbers, but I hope something like how many % of total /played is in classic vs retail.

Everyone here is pulling numbers out of thin air. I don't plan on playing but I hope it'll be very successful.

[Azgraal]

Damn... it's gonna be a sad day when numbers stabilize after Classic's launch and your line of thought crumbles down...

[Penegal]

I highly doubt that classic will go over 5M subscribers after the first two or three months. If it does, I will be very surprised.

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Classic haters are all pathetic pedestrians who are afraid to lose their meaningless "achievements" on retail.

Classic is objectively a much much better game than the retail abomination.

Depends on what you're looking for. If you're looking for a challenge different than "spend 2 weeks 24/7 grinding this to get it", its far from better. If you enjoy endgame, it sucks. If you enjoy the whole journey, it's better, yes.

[Adoxe]

I'm excited for Classic as much as the next guy but you're delusional.

[Relapses]

Like honestly dude...why do YOU think they aren't marketing the game? Do you think they have spend the last 3 years working on it because they don't want anyone to play it?

They do want people to play it. I've never said otherwise. The people they want playing it, however, are mostly the ones already paying to play the game; not this absurd "infinite playerbase" Classic fans love to pretend exists. That's why it isn't being marketed. It's essentially the same as a glorified content patch.

I won't discount that some players may return just to play Classic but I'm betting (as is Blizzard) a majority of those players have already purchased BfA so the subscription essentially provides these players with two games for the price of one. The number of people returning who haven't purchased BfA already is likely going to comprise a very small fraction of the people who ultimately end up populating Classic realms. (And for many of those people, there's a completely free alternative they're playing anyway.)

[Yriel]

Did you know that disco record sales were up 400% for the year ending 1976, if these trends continue...AY!

[Relapses]

Where did this lunatic idea come from? It requires far more time now to play a competitive level than it ever did in vanilla. We just watched around 7 guilds day raid for 16 hour days for 2 weeks straight with forging and heavily overleveled necks to clear the current content. Crazy hardcore back in the day was raiding for 5 days in the evenings maybe the top of the top would raid 7 days. There was no such thing as split runs there was no such thing as AP there was no such thing as forging.

Way to use WF raiding as the defining metric to compare competitive raiding from Vanilla to BfA. You can very easily remain in a top 1000 world guild in BfA essentially only ever doing your Emissaries and your weekly M+. It's actually better in BfA than it was in Legion. But hey, who cares about making reasonable analogies when you've already convinced yourself of the foregone conclusion that retail is beyond redemption.

[HollyCarp]

Please pardon me for not reading through 21 pages of comments to see if this has already been touched on. But I wonder if the OP (or how many other people) remember that Classic is bound to have a lot of the inconveniences that many "modern" players take for granted.

--BASE RUNNING SPEED max until level 40 (unless you're a hunter with Aspect of the Cheetah-- and remember that in Classic, you get dazed when hit while in that aspect)

--Paladin and Warlock level 60 mounts gated behind very long and troublesome quest lines. And not exactly cheap either, especially when the strongest mobs dropped tiny amounts of coin

--mounts, pets and quest items took up precious inventory space (remember, 16 slots was the MAX bag size and most people couldn't afford those; I was lucky to have 14 slots for one or two bags)

--Vanilla WoW had no GF where a group was automatically teleported to a dungeon-- you had to hoof it. Hell I remember once for friggin' SETHEKK HALLS (which won't be available in classic) I was the only one running there (you had to be level 70 to fly, and I wasn't there-- and anyway, Classic will not have flying mounts), almost dying numerous times, while every other one of the players sat in TOWN, *SCREAMING* how they're all gonna quit unless they get a summon via the stone. When nobody else was around the stone for miles and I finally put a foot down saying SOMEONE had to get the HELL off their lazy butt, a measly five seconds later I was the only one left in the group. Now imagine this in "Classic WoW?"

--Elite quests and areas requiring groups (Remember Stromgarde?). If you had a partner who IRL was a 13 year old kid and their mother suddenly demanded they get off the computer this instant to clean their room, either you hearthstoned really quick or you got mudhole stomped by repops.

--For Blacksmiths, Dark Iron gear could only be forged in Blackrock Depths. (I think you STILL need to do that today, but back then, Dark Iron was the strongest mail and plate gear in the game).

--Raids demanded Attunement-- long, tedious and expensive. AND it took up a precious inventory slot, because if you left the token in the vault back in Stormwind or Orgrimmar? OOPS! *ACCESS DENIED*

--speaking of raids, very specific classes and specs and roles were demanded. Druids not in resto spec weren't allowed to raid. They weren't allowed to anything except cast innervate on the priests. Paladins were told to just cast greater blessing over and over and over-- and in those days you had to bless EACH individual member, not the whole group. Those blessings lasted five measly minutes so by the time you finished, it was time to start all over! Not to mention greater blessings demanded reagents that you had to buy from a vendor.

--speaking of reagents, remember soul shards for warlocks? Took up precious inventory space?

--No easy access between Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor. At least, not for the Alliance. Baby Night Elves wanting to quest outside Stormwind had to run through the level 20+ Wetlands, and crocolisks would come running from MILES away for a bite of tender baby night elf meat. Then the level 10-20 Loch Modan. I don't even remember where the Horde Zeppelins went, outside of between Ratchet in the Barrens (just one zone then) and Booty Bay (STV was a bad part of town in those days).

--Much fewer class/race combos. There was no "ANY race could be a hunter" in those days. ONLY Alliance could be Paladins and ONLY Horde could be Shamans.

--Speaking of Shamans, totems took up inventory space and were mandatory for any totem-based spells.


...shall I go on?

Maybe these weren't game breakers but they were serious PITAS, and I wonder how many people will go running to WoW Classic, run into all of them, and promptly go "(CENSORED) this (CENSORED)!!!!!!!!"

[Xath]

Way to use WF raiding as the defining metric to compare competitive raiding from Vanilla to BfA. You can very easily remain in a top 1000 world guild in BfA essentially only ever doing your Emissaries and your weekly M+. It's actually better in BfA than it was in Legion. But hey, who cares about making reasonable analogies when you've already convinced yourself of the foregone conclusion that retail is beyond redemption.

top 1000 is not competitive lols you said competitive

[LionSinMaikeru]

That's the thing, chump. Sub numbers increased up till Wrath. So way after Vanilla. And Wrath WAS more accessible than Vanilla Of course after that people started to leave. One theory why they never came back even after the game got more casual is that unlike in Vanilla when WoW was the uncontested champion, gamers now can pick MMO's with better graphics, better combat, better professions, more features or even those that don't require a continued sub to play.

1. Name calling isn't necessary to make a point.

2. Vanilla is where most of the playerbase joined in. Vanilla ended at just above 7.5 million. BC it went to just above 10 million, and WoTLK hit a peak at 12.4 million. And then it went downhill from there.

So the point still stands, if your theory is accurate and people stopped subbing because they "got older" and the amount of time investment needed was too much, why didn't they return after WoW became incredibly casual friendly and required less of a time investment?

WoW was not the uncontested champion in Wrath where the subs were the highest. There was Aion, FF Online, etc.

I'm sorry, I'm just not convinced people suddenly grew up and decided they didn't want to play the game. You're just making theories upon theories to rationalize something that is easily rationalized by a single factor. It's less of an assumption to believe they left because they didn't like the direction the game was going in / they weren't having fun anymore.

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Depends on what you're looking for. If you're looking for a challenge different than "spend 2 weeks 24/7 grinding this to get it", its far from better. If you enjoy endgame, it sucks. If you enjoy the whole journey, it's better, yes.

Honestly, this is where Blizzard messed up, in my opinion.

They started putting SO much focus on the endgame and ignoring the journey. The whole point of an RPG is not the final boss, it's the journey it takes to reach the final boss. The lessons learned, the equipment acquired, the skills honed, etc. In Vanilla / TBC, less than 3%(?) of the playerbase 100% the game by finishing the final boss. And as one of those players, I was completely okay with that because I had so much to do in the world and was still honing my character.

For some reason Blizzard got the bad idea that endgame needs to be accessible to everyone and that the journey doesn't matter. So they put all their resources into the endgame and ignore the journey parts which need a LOT of work now. And the game has hurt because of it.

[anon5123]

HEY GUYS REMEMBER CLASSIC SUCKS LOL!!!

Classic is being made specifically for people who have already played vanilla, mostly on pservers.

Shoo, troll.