[speculation] Burning Crusade Servers in 2021

[Vorkreist]

It's weird reading comments so out of touch with reality that it's frightening.

The anti classic derps are getting ready for round 2: "You think you want TBC but you don't.... Nobody wants TBC ..... Nobody will play TBC etc"

[Dejiko]

If you offer TBC servers and let the characters progress and transfer to it,
do you keep the Classic servers open or shut them down to
focus support on the TBC servers?

If this is the trend, will there be say 5-10 servers open for each expansion at all times?
Or will you have to shut down Classic eventually, which will cause people to ask
for Classic servers to reopen again?

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

If you offer TBC servers and let the characters progress and transfer to it,
do you keep the Classic servers open or shut them down to
focus support on the TBC servers?

If this is the trend, will there be say 5-10 servers open for each expansion at all times?
Or will you have to shut down Classic eventually, which will cause people to ask
for Classic servers to reopen again?

Leaving them open is honestly only going to lead to people asking for more Classic content. I'm honestly partial to just upgrading them to BC. Maybe so people don't ree they decide to make two versions of BC. One with Flight, LFG, and Arenas, and one without those things.

[arkanon]

If you offer TBC servers and let the characters progress and transfer to it,
do you keep the Classic servers open or shut them down to
focus support on the TBC servers?

If this is the trend, will there be say 5-10 servers open for each expansion at all times?
Or will you have to shut down Classic eventually, which will cause people to ask
for Classic servers to reopen again?

I doubt the classic servers will be shut down any time soon - they might be a ghost town, but if that is because players have moved on to other content under the same sub, be that retail or BC, i dont think Blizzard will care. I personally think the only way this would work successfully is to have a character copy process where you copy your lvl 60 character over to the newly released TBC servers, leaving a copy on the Classic server as well.

I dont really see any alternative tbh, and Blizzard have said more than once they intend the classic realm to be a 'museum' type realm, which to me at least says they wont update it in any meaningful way (activating TBC on it, or Classic+)

- - - Updated - - -

Leaving them open is honestly only going to lead to people asking for more Classic content. I'm honestly partial to just upgrading them to BC. Maybe so people don't ree they decide to make two versions of BC. One with Flight, LFG, and Arenas, and one without those things.

Thier communication to date contradicts this philosophy though, as mentioned above they have used the term "museum" multiple times, which to me indicates their intention to leave it as is, even if they choose to create TBC servers.

[stomination]

There is nothing left to milk in classic, it is a dried up piece of shit.

It keeps ppl subbed. tons dont play the retail version. Retail should be happy that money is going to blizz that they put in retail and other games.

[Yayeet]

This seems pretty accurate to me.

If the reception of Shadowlands is poor, launching TBC will give them time to course-correct retail.

- - - Updated - - -



Given the disposable design of retail, I doubt TBC or WotLK would hurt it. It would just give players something to do between patches.

Splitting time between retail and classic is pretty much the intended design.

No blizzard expansion has ever been received poorly at the start, even BFA had 10 million box sales less than 2 weeks, that's not gonna change with Shadowlands.

Personally, I have a feeling that Shadowlands will be another success like Legion and MoP and Wrath where WoW had the highest peaks in concurrent players.

- - - Updated - - -

It keeps ppl subbed. tons dont play the retail version. Retail should be happy that money is going to blizz that they put in retail and other games.

That's a good meme right there. The server capacity of all classic servers was less than 750k combined globally. Not to mention queues died quite heavily after the first month even when they brought servers back to their initial population capacity, that says it all about how dead it has been ever since.

[SirCowdog]

No blizzard expansion has ever been received poorly at the start, even BFA had 10 million box sales less than 2 weeks, that's not gonna change with Shadowlands.

Personally, I have a feeling that Shadowlands will be another success like Legion and MoP and Wrath where WoW had the highest peaks in concurrent players.

I didn't say "received poorly at the start". I meant exactly what I wrote.

It's the same thing with BfA. Early on, of course, it had high player counts and hype. Just like every other expansion(as you pointed out). But later down the road, as players started to wrap their heads around how sub-optimal a lot of the features and changes were, interest started to die off. Overall, BfA did rather poory. In many cases competing with WoD for title of "worse expansion in wow".

Enter Classic.


It will very likely be exactly the same thing with TBC. Blizzard will launch Shadowlands, and as interest starts to die down, they'll launch TBC to generate another spike of interest. The only real variables will be how much focus is placed on the launch of TBC, and the timing of that launch, depending on how good or bad Shadowlands does.

[Askyl]

Blizz already said how the population works. It compares to the highest server population, there are no real numbers behind that. If the biggest server would only have 500 active characters it would still say high.

But whatever, guys like you are unteachable. Not that these numbers were insane at the beginning and guys like you praised these numbers from the addons which showed over 9 million different characters, now these numbers are down you say something like 'numbers are not always right herpaderp'.

Classic was a succes for maybe two months. Now it is down to the few players + some more that already played private servers, and guess what? The scan numbers fit these.

But hey, as long as you enjoyed it it's fine, isn't it? And vice versa, classic actually swept a lot of toxic shit from retail away and instead brought back a lot of old players that play again, especially right now some hours before a new patch. It is actually insane how many old new players were there in the last few weeks. So it is good for both, right?

BC servers still won't happen as these numbers in Classic are simply not big enough to split the community even more. It would end in dead Classic servers because more of that playerbase would play BC than people that still play retail. Simple logic.

Thankfully I love fiction, so reading your post made me smile a lot. I'd love a source to that claim since that's nothing like what Blizzard have communicated on low/high/full etc.

And if the servers are dead, how come every population site still shows thousands of active players each week?

I can PROMISE you, your life won't change because Classic is a success the slightest. You can still enjoy retail, other games or just any other hobby at all. You don't need to "force down" Classic for no reason.

That's a good meme right there. The server capacity of all classic servers was less than 750k combined globally. Not to mention queues died quite heavily after the first month even when they brought servers back to their initial population capacity, that says it all about how dead it has been ever since.

Like this as well. Wtf? Is "Dead" to you, something alive? you can seriously roll on even the "low" pop servers and have a great time, PvP, find people for dungeons without issues and there will be plenty of people to raid with. How is that dead?

And your capacity is straight up wrong. I'd love to see your math and logic behind that, since they've highered the max population on classic servers. There are around 50% of how many servers there were when patch 2.0 hit and we have around 3x the max population per server now. And at that stage we had 6 (i think?) million players.

I guess those 6 million players all just waited at login screens forever?

[Blackmist]

You should work for the Daily Express with bullshit clickbait titles like that.

[ErrandRunner]

What they could and should do in the future is have one client and allow people to choose which expansion experience they want to have by setting it from the main screen after WOW opens from the launcher. An x.1 patch and a final patch (or current patch if you want retail) for each expansion could be chosen and you need to restart the client if you want to change between them.

I personally think such a system would be considered too much work, but it would be cool nonetheless if they would implement it.

[Askyl]

At first, find yourself the source. It is some pages in the back on this site, or in this forum etc, that the Server population are not actual numbers.

You rely on scan sites now with actives players now, too. But you still show, that you don't understand these sites. It's about CHARACTERS, NOT PLAYERS.
As nothing beside Blizz can get the actual playerbase. But you can guess them.

The highest scan numbers now show 750k different characters worldwide. Seeing that forum and simply my friendlist (the only one that still plays Classic) plays at least 2 characters. A lot of these forum even state they play multiple characters. If you think about that fact and divide it by the scan numbers, even when you add a number for possible missed characters unscanned you will come down roughly to 200-250k players. And that fits perfectly the site only scanning characters online at the same time which comes clostest to the actual playerbase.

These numbers may not be too bad and it is enough to keep at least some servers active, but it is definetly not closely enough for another set of servers with BC. And stick your Server Population tag in your arse. My Classic servers was dead after the first month and it still says 'High'. A literal joke.

But as you said, as I said, it does not matter as long as you enjoy what you are doing. But I love how people are blind about facts when they don't want them to be true. I mean, in the end every retail players has something from a healthy classic as it is free money for blizz with almost no effort that flows into other development. And, as I said, retail was freed from so much toxic waste while the Classic community is widely complaining about growing toxicity.
And there are tons of players back in retail that played classic and came back to retail after several years right now. WIn WIn, right?

So. you don't have a source and ask me to find something on MMO-champ? I only read blue as source, sorry. Didn't read rest, since all your credability went down the drain.

They did change how the population was shown, but not in any way close to what you said. They just changed it from how it works on retail to more how it works on classic, but the classic servers also have a lot higher max population. Low on classic = high on vanilla.

[Tumile]

Do you have some detailed breakdown of Blizzard's income that nobody else has access to?

Everyone has access to their tax revisions and they have frequently been a discussion topic on these very forums. the actual sub numbers is a guestimate though, hence the inaccuracy when describing them. but i doubt anyone would argue that they were significantly lower in BFA than during its peak at the end of wotlk / start of cata.

[Relapses]

Everyone has access to their tax revisions and they have frequently been a discussion topic on these very forums. the actual sub numbers is a guestimate though, hence the inaccuracy when describing them. but i doubt anyone would argue that they were significantly lower in BFA than during its peak at the end of wotlk / start of cata.

You have absolutely no idea what percentage of Blizzard's current income is currently coming from value added services because they don't release a break down of their revenue.

It's a bit disingenuous to compare Blizzard in WotLK when they had just WoW and WoW alone to Blizzard today which has its income shared across OW, HotS, D3 and Hearthstone. Add to that the fact that Blizzard booted 800 employees recently (Q4 2018) and it paints a picture that, no, Blizzard really isn't reaping the same profit from value added services as they would have back at peak WoW. I won't disagree with your contention that, yes, value added services likely do allow WoW to operate successfully with lower subscriber numbers and huge profit margins; however, to say that these services make Blizzard the same amount of revenue as they would have from subscriptions back in WotLK is a bit of an exaggeration which cannot be substantiated without knowing information about Blizzard's income streams that hasn't been released.

[Tumile]

You have absolutely no idea what percentage of Blizzard's current income is currently coming from value added services because they don't release a break down of their revenue.

It's a bit disingenuous to compare Blizzard in WotLK when they had just WoW and WoW alone to Blizzard today which has its income shared across OW, HotS, D3 and Hearthstone. Add to that the fact that Blizzard booted 800 employees recently (Q4 2018) and it paints a picture that, no, Blizzard really isn't reaping the same profit from value added services as they would have back at peak WoW. I won't disagree with your contention that, yes, value added services likely do allow WoW to operate successfully with lower subscriber numbers and huge profit margins; however, to say that these services make Blizzard the same amount of revenue as they would have from subscriptions back in WotLK is a bit of an exaggeration which cannot be substantiated without knowing information about Blizzard's income streams that hasn't been released.

not even gonna bother arguing this with you, go look it up yourself, you don't even understand the basics of what I've told you. the profits are segregated.

[Caperfin]

Why is the word "new" in the title?

[Will]

WoW is a subscription game and as such temporary bumps in player subscriptions aren't always the best indication of quality. Sustainability is far more important to Blizzard than a quick burst of millions of subscribers. If Blizzard was satisfied with simply the temporary surge that Classic brought to the game, I'm sure we would have heard them announce additional expansions at BlizzCon. Instead, we heard barely anything. To me, that tells me that they're still very concerned with how well Classic trends six-months-plus out and do not want to commit to additional products until they know that there's a reliable, easily sustainable audience for the content.

Errr, exactly? It's a subscription game and Blizzard is a business -- with a simple goal: Make money. A temporary boost in subscriptions for relatively little man-hours of work compared to a new expansion? That's not just financially viable -- it's a financial no-brainer.

Sustainability is important for retail, yes. But we're talking about legacy expansions here. It's a different business approach. They'd happily take a huge shot of re-subs (which benefits retail too since they're the same sub), especially when the team required to bring back TBC (as they did Vanilla) is minuscule compared to making a new retail expansion.

This is pretty basic business. Your heart cannot argue with cold hard maths.

- - - Updated - - -

I don’t think TBC servers will ever happen, unless they actually have backups of the servers available and can just plant them into Classic.

Doing so would create an odd precedent of just where they’d draw a line in re-releasing old expansions.

If you studied business studies you wouldn't be saying you don't think they will ever happen. You'd instead be thinking they're quite likely to happen.

[Shockzalot]

Nice click bait thread, OP.

[Will]

I don't really understand what's to be discussed here that hasn't already been discussed (to death) in any one of the already-existing threads on this subject. If BlizzCon is any indication, TBC is on the radar but they're waiting to see the long-term staying power of Classic before announcing additional expansions.

Forget long term staying power. The initial interest alone that Classic generated made them MANY MANY MANY times over in profit over the (comparatively) small cost and small team required to turn Vanilla into Classic for us. That alone is financially viable. Even if every player who came back for Classic quit after a week, it would have been a roaring success.

- - - Updated - - -

If additional bursts in subscribers were a no-brainer, as you suggest, we would've heard about it at BlizzCon. We didn't.

Your point 'we didn't hear it at Blizzcon' proves jack squat and you know it. That Blizzcon was literally what, 3 months post Classic launch? WAY too soon to be announcing TBC. If we hear about TBC-Classic, it'll be at 2020's Blizzcon. Again, this is basic economics. You still want to milk something for what it's worth.

You can't just look at the lack of TBC announcements at Blizzcon mere months after Classic came out and use that as some kind of argument that it proves there won't be TBC. That's primary school levels of argument. I mean COME ON...

And yes, additional bursts of subscribers are fantastic for Blizzard, because at the end of the day it's money, and a damn sight more money than it cost them to bring Vanilla back to us in the form of Classic. This is literally the core fundamental of how a business works. It's all about the money, dude.

[therealstegblob]

If you studied business studies you wouldn't be saying you don't think they will ever happen. You'd instead be thinking they're quite likely to happen.

What an amazingly ignorant and stupid post, jesus christ lol.

Dude, Classic wasn't even going to happen until some random old Blizzard devs literally got a hold of Kotick and more or less pleaded with him that Classic would be a financial success. So much for "business studies", huh?

TBC servers would almost assuredly be a success (like a slightly less successful version of Classic), but like I said, they may not have the ability to even implement it. Classic only exists today because they managed to find a single backup version of the game, and even then it took them months to get it working so they could release it. TBC-Classic might actually be an impossibility.

[Will]

Honestly the big loser in the "split the playerbase" argument would be retail. Because releasing more classic versions means there's going to be players who disliked Vanilla that might now like BC, or might now like Wrath, and decide to split time between Retail and those expansions.

This 'split the playerbase' argument is blown way out of proportion. The game already has sharding technology. Less shards, same player capacity per shard? Unless you're on a dead realm, in which case other options exist like transfers or mergers.

Furthermore, people who tout this 'split the playerbase' argument as a reason why they shouldn't do TBC also fail to realise that a whole lotta TBC players are not currently playing, nor have any interest in Classic. Those such people returning for TBC would actually add to the playerbase, counteracting the split.

- - - Updated - - -

What an amazingly ignorant and stupid post, jesus christ lol.

Dude, Classic wasn't even going to happen until some random old Blizzard devs literally got a hold of Kotick and more or less pleaded with him that Classic would be a financial success. So much for "business studies", huh?

TBC servers would almost assuredly be a success (like a slightly less successful version of Classic), but like I said, they may not have the ability to even implement it. Classic only exists today because they managed to find a single backup version of the game, and even then it took them months to get it working so they could release it. TBC-Classic might actually be an impossibility.

You said it yourself.

Classic only exists today because they managed to find a single backup version of the game

Also, regarding what you said here:

Classic wasn't even going to happen until some random old Blizzard devs literally got a hold of Kotick and more or less pleaded with him

well I can only respond as follows: Do you think Blizzard own a crystal ball? It's widely accepted even Blizzard had no idea Classic would be even HALF as successful as it actually turned out to be. Now they KNOW how successful it is, so my argument is simple: In LIGHT of this knowledge, TBC is a no-brainer.

You call my post ignorant and stupid, but you're literally making me face palm with your terrible, atrocious logic. From my perspective you're the one who has no bloody clue.