After playing the game, do you agree with Blizzard's expected "steep drop-off"?

[Musta]

I will decrease like any wow expac and then stabilize.

[Celarent]

A large portion of players have to be bored BFA players who just aren't into Vanilla.

That said, I'm starting to wonder of word of mouth among former players will keep Classic-centric subscriptions a lot higher than anticipated in the long term.

[Aggrophobic]

If we went by what's "popular today" there would be people playing BFA lol

There are a lot of players playing BfA, whats your point?

[kail]

I intend to play it for the long haul, but I predict many will just feel daunted by the leveling alone.

[tacoloco]

It *seems* like there are fewer people, but I don't know if that's because most people playing are out of my range. I'm level 14 now. Still plenty of kill stealing jerkwads, though.

[Uselessrouge]

i played vanilla and was not really ready to go back.. but since release i got hooked again and enjoy the game a lot...

my warrior is 55+ and i all ready think of what alt to play...

can't stop the grind :P

[MasterHamster]

The drop-off is a certainty, and I hope it speeds up so the population stabilizes sooner rather than later, before Blizzard gets the idea of opening even more realms, which risks those ghost-town realms no one want to be on further down the line.
The quicker those who don't enjoy Classic for what it is goes back to BFA, the better.

Classic players knows full well that the game is far from a game that appeals to everyone.
Just look at those who makes it abundantly clear just how conditioned they are to view leveling as nothing but this giant hurdle to get over to get to the real game, and hating every moment of leveling up. The only thing they'll find at level 60 is more grinds and slow progression, they won't enjoy that either.
Leveling is the game in Classic, and lvl 60 content is just a bonus. A "goal" or a "journey's end" sure, but it's not THE ONLY GAME like in BFA.

[Powerogue]

Well it's definitely dived considering I didn't see any servers at "full" today even though on release barely over a week ago people were complaining about 10,000+ queues while I sat contently killing boars on one of the many available mid population realms.

Still seems like plenty of people around. We'll see how it lasts once most people have hit 60 and whatnot. I'm still fighting a pretty darn high population of noobs for this crab mucus.

Playing both atm and feeling fine. I'll hit 60 eventually, and I hope to have my 750 warfront badge mount eventually.

[Khaza-R]

It *seems* like there are fewer people, but I don't know if that's because most people playing are out of my range. I'm level 14 now. Still plenty of kill stealing jerkwads, though.

Player base is more spread out now as people are leveling at different speeds. Some people re-rolled. But the majority seems to be sitting around 30-35 atm

[sibut]

No clue. They have access to a lot more data and research than I do and I just have access to my own experiences. I've enjoyed the experience that I expected and had been hoping for since they announced they'd have classic servers and I'll keep playing for quite a while. I wouldn't be surprised if there was a pretty big drop off after 2-3 months when some people who rushed through run out of things to do and others decide the grind to 60 and everything that goes with it isn't worth it, but I imagine there will still be a pretty big base left. At the end of the day I don't really care one way or the other as long as there's enough of a population to get a few pug raids in on my server and hopefully eventually some AQ/Naxx clearing guilds who will sell me a spot to see the content since I'll never have time to raid through all of it "legitimately."

[Akka]

Everyone with a brain expected a drop-off after the initial hype.
That's the concept of "hype", and the contrast between how current WoW is played and how Classic is was certain to turn around a lot of people.
My main fear was that Blizzard didn't plan for it, and that we would have ghost servers quickly into the game.

But contrary to the OP, I actually expected a LOT more drop-off MUCH faster. I've in fact been rather impressed by how much the game is holding people in.
We're now nearly two weeks in, and the population has barely changed. There has been a TINY drop-off (basically, we had small queues at peak hours and no we have no more queue), but that's it. There is still ungodly amount of new characters created at any time (47 lvl 2 yesterday at 23h) and even during a sunday at 5h in the morning there is still tons of people everywhere (and that's only in my layer) and my "lookingforgroup" channel manage to fill a whole chat page in 6 minutes. And the server isn't even "full", it's just "high".

So actually, I get the exact opposite of the feeling in this thread : the population is holding MUCH better than I'd expected. Maybe it's that my server is special case, or maybe it's the unrealistic/short-sighted expectation of many people (just how many are saying "there is less people" just because people are simply spread out on more zones with two weeks of leveling ?), but I really don't seem to have the same experience as many, and the fact that servers are still in the overpopulated red and Blizzard open new ones, tend to make me think I'm not the one wrong here.

[buddhapunch09]

I dont think so. We still have phase 2 coming that thats going to be extremely fun with pvp.
Also the raids and stuff that havent been released. We needed classic WoW its one of those games that is like a Mario or Zelda. There will always be people playing it.

[zetitup]

The sad part is people are spamming instances with mages/warlocks/warriors cause it's the fastest way for most classes, so you will not see the "lazy" people who wants to rush to 60 in the world. Just compare outside SM compared to some random questing zone. Im still having a blast running around questing, doing some more challanging quests etc to improve myself. I will still be playing the game in a few months.

Saying "I already did that back in 2005 bla bla" is a weird thing to say imo.
Like "I watched this movie once, i liked it (or disliked it), but now i will never watch it again."

[Orbusg]

Every reasonable person familiar with numerous mmo's knows there's going to be a drop off, eventually.
The real questions at hand is if you believe blizz's very steep prediction and so fast, which imo seems more like wishful thinking on retail wow's part.

Remember that they outright rejected classic for over a decade and "you think you do but you don't" came from the person that runs the show now.
Does this sound like a group that's happy to have to eat their words and do exactly that years later?
I'm sure most of the classic group is passionate about classic.
I'm also sure Ian is not.

[shadowmatrix]

Every reasonable person familiar with numerous mmo's knows there's going to be a drop off, eventually.
The real questions at hand is if you believe blizz's very steep prediction and so fast, which imo seems more like wishful thinking on retail wow's part.

Remember that they outright rejected classic for over a decade and "you think you do but you don't" came from the person that runs the show now.
Does this sound like a group that's happy to have to eat their words and do exactly that years later?
I'm sure most of the classic group is passionate about classic.
I'm also sure Ian is not.

Blizzard is happy as long as people are subbing, it doesn't matter which version they are subbing to since it all goes to the same company. Blizzard however has to foot the bill for those servers and if we go by their other games they tend to leave the lights on for a long time before shutting the game servers down. For them the classic servers are likely going to be running for 10 years or more if they can justify it.

[Shaetha]

That's how the game--Greater WoW if you will--is played these days. These are the equivalent of ad hoc mini-pugs out in the world. They were fairly common in BC when I started (never played Vanilla) and have become the norm in the years since.

There has been this huge argument about how content determines community behavior which I always thought was suspect. Drop 3000 players from 2019 into a design from 2005 and they will find ways to play it in the way they're used to. "Life finds a way" as Dr. Ian Malcolm was fond of saying.

It's true that some people leveling are being more helpful in Classic then they are in the other version of the game but that's only because they, as players, want to be more helpful. They don't have to be and if there are plenty of people around they don't need to be so they want to be. There's no personal reputation that's necessarily going to accrue because Player A helped Players B & C down Hogger. Most will just assemble what they need from whoever is around and then move on after they're done probably never to meet again that they know of. You can argue that that is social play but to me it's as social as most of what happens in BFA: strangers group up for a short time to do something and after it's done they depart still strangers. Content has nothing to do with it.

The only difference is Classic forces you to notice it, and most players have their heads up their ass when soloing. Myself included.

[LedZeppelin]

There will be a drop off like most games after a large launch but I think it will definitely will not die

[Gratlim]

To be honest Classic need a major drop off or else it will be a nightmare when layer are removed in P2 unless you're playing on those new low servers.

Playing on a pretty big server (Mograine EU) I could live with 30% of the pop we have now. There is too many guilds, still queues, too many horde and too many mages. I hope many will stop playing after reaching 60 by spamming aoe in dungeons haha.

On the other end, you can expect a big rise again when BGs become available (phase 3?).

[Shaetha]

The drop-off is a certainty, and I hope it speeds up so the population stabilizes sooner rather than later, before Blizzard gets the idea of opening even more realms, which risks those ghost-town realms no one want to be on further down the line.
The quicker those who don't enjoy Classic for what it is goes back to BFA, the better.

Classic players knows full well that the game is far from a game that appeals to everyone.
Just look at those who makes it abundantly clear just how conditioned they are to view leveling as nothing but this giant hurdle to get over to get to the real game, and hating every moment of leveling up. The only thing they'll find at level 60 is more grinds and slow progression, they won't enjoy that either.
Leveling is the game in Classic, and lvl 60 content is just a bonus. A "goal" or a "journey's end" sure, but it's not THE ONLY GAME like in BFA.

Yes, tell the potential new players to leave. You know, the players that need to stay in order for a game to be successful long term. Your post is basically asking for the game to be on life support, slowly bleeding out. It benefits you to keep people playing longer. I don't understand how people can talk so much bullshit about community while saying such antisocial things. Being social isn't about hanging out with your friends. It's about meeting NEW people. A social person would want as many people to play as possible, but those people don't want to be social. They just want their cool kids club.

[Granyala]

What is your opinion after playing the game [...]

I'm not expecting a steep drop off, I'm expecting a graph resembling a cliff at this point.
Very few people will keep up with the level of drag, frustration and wastefulness (in regard to a players time) the game throws at them. Most will quit before hitting Lv 30.