Does Classic have more players than retail?

[Niwes]

Or you know, every patch has its own life and its at the very end right now. The Azshara patch has been out since early july, it's very close to 8.3. At this point you will see the least amount of people on retail. It's not guesswork, thats facts, confirmed by Blizzard several times.

Population on retail will always swing because of patches, end of story. Come back when 8.3 has just been released and make the comparison again.

yep. will do so. this will be interessting.

[toffmcsoft]

I've signed on to retail every 1-2 weeks since July to take a peek at the population.

During the week of Classics release relate was a GHOST TOWN. Literally nobody playing the game.
Since then there has been bounce back to retail, however, when comparing it to classic there's no question the release of classic has drastically effected the retail population.

The divide of the player base has occurred and it's pretty clear that classic is the winner.

[Kuja]

I would say so, yes. Since classic was launched, my AH sales have dropped significantly. Like by 70%. Could be a coincidence, or not. Guild invites too.

[Dug]

I know personally I've already started going back to retail. I'm half way through 59 and once I ding 60 I'll work on a few end game dungeons but after that I'm out until BGs. There is just no incentive to stick around at max lvl if you're not prepared to invest time for raiding.

[horbindr]

Also high populated classic realm can hold far more players than retail.

seeing this pop up several times in this thread. but surely it's the other way around? they are artificially limiting classic realms, even went into quite some detail for that.

when P2 comes around, a stable classic server will probably be designed for around 3000-6000 active players logged in at once (1-2 layers, but spread out).

meanwhile retail realms have no such restrictions and use a ton of sharding/phasing technologies. and presumably classics artificial player limit "that could be much higher", is based on retail realm tech?

i'm not saying retail realms are ever full in reality, but surely their technical player capacity is much much higher, wouldn't be surprised if it was 15-20k.

[Relapses]

That's anecdotal.
Literally 1 person on my fl plays retail, the other ~40 (that play WoW) are playing classic. Quite funny how that works

Lmfao, thanks for proving my post at #37 correct, guys.

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People who are saying 'we don't know', you're right.

People who are saying 'it doesn't matter', you're wrong.

It matters to future development. If Classic player count was even competitive with retail long term, that would be a big deal. I don't know exactly what Blizzard would do in response, but it would not just be business as usual. Would they shift some of their team to a new classic pipeline, would they just realize they've fucked up retail and need to change direction completely.. I don't know. I just know there would be repercussions.

Here's what Blizzard would do: Nothing. Absolutely fucking nothing. Classic doesn't compete with retail. It's supplemental. It is the very definition of inconsequential content. The only people who seem to give a shit about its popularity are the ones who feel so alienated by the retail version of the game that Classic must perform better so their smug opinion about what's best for the game is somehow validated.

[tikcol]

Even if that is the case we still have more full/high servers on retail than the total amount of servers in classic. Again, its basically a no brainer.

low/medium/high/full indicators are relative to each other. They're not absolute values and they reflect the number of people online at a given time, not the number of people that created characters on said server.

You can literally log in to a bfa server that has a "full" indicator and it's dead AF, because guess what, the other full servers are dead too and the medium/low servers have 50 people online

[slime]

I saw 5 commercials play while watching football games on Sunday... literally 5 commercials for WoW Classic.

[Nnyco]

low/medium/high/full indicators are relative to each other. They're not absolute values and they reflect the number of people online at a given time, not the number of people that created characters on said server.

You can literally log in to a bfa server that has a "full" indicator and it's dead AF, because guess what, the other full servers are dead too and the medium/low servers have 50 people online

I mean you have proven multiple times on this forum so far that youre not the smartest around here, but i assume even you know what the meaning of "full" is.

[Sangfoudre]

yep. will do so. this will be interessting.

It will, not that server are low pop rn but, as always 3 months after the beginning of a tier, Mythic raids leaderboard is complete, patches include nerfs, people get bored of mm+ keys so they level alts. People leveling alts don't do raid or mm. Or play 10 min a day to get the bee, the last mech resource needed for whatever essence or sth like that. The 2 months following 8.3 servers will be crowded as they once were.

If you remember the dates, classic was launched 2 months after 8.2. And Dire Maul, 2 or 2.5 months after that. That's the life of a patch in Wow. After that people get bored, unsub and a bunch will swing back and forth from retail to classic

[justandulas]

Lmfao, thanks for proving my post at #37 correct, guys.

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Here's what Blizzard would do: Nothing. Absolutely fucking nothing. Classic doesn't compete with retail. It's supplemental. It is the very definition of inconsequential content. The only people who seem to give a shit about its popularity are the ones who feel so alienated by the retail version of the game that Classic must perform better so their smug opinion about what's best for the game is somehow validated.

I see it as the complete opposite and that retail players are the ones desperately to smugly say retail is better when all evidence points to the contrary.

I won’t speak for overall population (I suspect classic dwarfs retail) but for me personally, there’s more people in my classic guild than exist total players on my 3 retail realms

Skullcrusher, which used to be high pop, is all but a ghost town and Herod is booming. I can’t imagine a scenario where my group of wow players would ever go back to retail over classic. They’d have to fundamentally change the game back to tbc era mechanics and raids

And IF they do classic+.... gg

[Sangfoudre]

I would say so, yes. Since classic was launched, my AH sales have dropped significantly. Like by 70%. Could be a coincidence, or not. Guild invites too.

When classic launched, 8.2 had two months which is basically the time when a tier begin to fade. I guess Blizzard uses Classic as a filler game as it prevents a fraction of player from unsubing between tiers.

[FuxieDK]

I'm hearing people saying that classic has more players than retail. How do you see that? How do they know? Is there a way to see classic and retail populations?

With the amount of people who have already stopped playing Classic, it's impossible it have more players than retail..

Even at its highest, it was no where close to retail.

[justandulas]

With the amount of people who have already stopped playing Classic, it's impossible it have more players than retail..

Even at its highest, it was no where close to retail.

Spoiler alert; you’re wrong. As a professional stock investor, classic wow and mw are the only things propping atvi stock up

Classic wow, for example, tripled the total number of wow subs when it released.

Let’s presume half quit already; that’s still double the player count of retail

A lot of numbers thrown away by the community but the only one that matters is corporate performance numbers and classic tripled bfa subs. Tripled. Let that sink in

[tikcol]

I mean you have proven multiple times on this forum so far that youre not the smartest around here, but i assume even you know what the meaning of "full" is.

Population indicators are relative to each other and don't follow absolute values, get your head around this fact. It doesn't matter if bfa has more high pop servers than classic because a classic server with low pop can have more players online than a bfa server.

Do you need me to paint you a picture or would you rather do a quick google search on how population indicators work before embarrassing yourself further?

[Temp1on2]

Spoiler alert; you’re wrong. As a professional stock investor, classic wow and mw are the only things propping atvi stock up

Classic wow, for example, tripled the total number of wow subs when it released.

Let’s presume half quit already; that’s still double the player count of retail

A lot of numbers thrown away by the community but the only one that matters is corporate performance numbers and classic tripled bfa subs. Tripled. Let that sink in

This is really flawed logic. Apart from anything else (such as every patch seeing a spike of returning players), it assumes that every one of those subscriptions is purely a classic player.

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Population indicators are relative to each other and don't follow absolute values, get your head around this fact. It doesn't matter if bfa has more high pop servers than classic because a classic server with low pop can have more players online than a bfa server.

Do you need me to paint you a picture or would you rather do a quick google search on how population indicators work before embarrassing yourself further?

I understand what you mean, but I was under the impression that "full" is a set value and isn't dynamic. Full by definition means a set limit has been reached.

[justandulas]

This is really flawed logic. Apart from anything else (such as every patch seeing a spike of returning players), it assumes that every one of those subscriptions is purely a classic player.

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I understand what you mean, but I was under the impression that "full" is a set value and isn't dynamic. Full by definition means a set limit has been reached.

Every one of those subs was for classic. The people playing retail were still doing it and it had been 2 months since the patch

Why all of a sudden did they see an influx of TRIPLE the player subs during the month after classic launch? Hmmm I wonder lol

[tikcol]

This is really flawed logic. Apart from anything else (such as every patch seeing a spike of returning players), it assumes that every one of those subscriptions is purely a classic player.

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I understand what you mean, but I was under the impression that "full" is a set value and isn't dynamic. Full by definition means a set limit has been reached.

That's the funny part, it isn't a set value either. Doesn't fluctuate as much as high does but it still fluctuates. You can log in to full servers sometimes and not have a queue, ever wondered why that happens?

[Nnyco]

Population indicators are relative to each other and don't follow absolute values, get your head around this fact. It doesn't matter if bfa has more high pop servers than classic because a classic server with low pop can have more players online than a bfa server.

Do you need me to paint you a picture or would you rather do a quick google search on how population indicators work before embarrassing yourself further?

Full means the server reached its capacity, ergo the other servers are relative to a full server. But thank you for proving my point about your brightness.

[Kaibhan]

Just login to retail in the middle of the night 1 day before the weekly reset, basicly on the worst day to do anything and...

... you see multiple raids still doing the pvp evens (IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT)
... you see everywhere players doing WQ's (PARAGON)
... you get N/HC/M raids running (IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT)
... you got like 9 pages long scroll for M+ keys 10-20 running (IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT) as ALLIANCE (small population)

I am not sure how people can even come to the conclusion that the population is even comperable, I guess they log in to stormwind and decide nobody is playing?!

If even the classic streamers are clear about the huge decline in classic population, what gives you even the slightest hint it could be otherwise?

But just login yourself in both version and tell me what you see.

This hasn't been my experience at that time. I call shenanigans.