Will you remain in classic when TBC comes out?

[Relapses]

I’ve never thought about it that way but I still don’t see why it’s a connection. Sub loss is sub loss, that’s that. Why did the people who cancelled their sub not resubscribe? I’m willing to bet it’s because the direction they took the game.

That's a bit hyperbolic. It assumes that WoW has an infinite shelf life and nobody has ever simply quit the game to, you know, move on with their lives and shit.

[seamnstr]

Oops voted for wrong option. Can't wait for tbc. While i love classic, tbc is just superior in most ways.

[Laqweeta]

That's a bit hyperbolic. It assumes that WoW has an infinite shelf life and nobody has ever simply quit the game to, you know, move on with their lives and shit.

So 90% of wows top end subs (12M) (B.Net API leak showed woes subs at 2.7M, NOT the WeakAuras leak) quit to “move on with their lives and shit”? I mean don’t get me wrong, I’m sure people did.. but the majority was because the direction they took the game. (And Lich King being the penultimate villain too)

[Relapses]

So 90% of wows top end subs (12M) (B.Net API leak showed woes subs at 2.7M, NOT the WeakAuras leak) quit to “move on with their lives and shit”? I mean don’t get me wrong, I’m sure people did.. but the majority was because the direction they took the game. (And Lich King being the penultimate villain too)

Are you actually willing to make the argument that it's not unreasonable for people to quit a video game that requires a $15/mo subscription over the course of a 10 year period of time?

[Laqweeta]

Are you actually willing to make the argument that it's not unreasonable for people to quit a video game that requires a $15/mo subscription over the course of a 10 year period of time?

I mean I get it, the cost is off putting - but man I just can’t fathom 50 cents a day being the reason you quit the game lmao.

[cparle87]

I mean Blizzard used to publicly share sub loss and gain until it got too low to share.

Except if they say subs rose 4mil they could've lost 2mil current subs and gained 6mil new ones. That's what he means. During the growth period people WERE quitting, that's a fact. Fewer people were quitting than were joining, so overall subs went up.

[Relapses]

I mean I get it, the cost is off putting - but man I just can’t fathom 50 cents a day being the reason you quit the game lmao.

It's not really the cost that would cause you to quit. It's the fact that you can no longer justify paying $15/mo for a video game that you don't play that much. I link this a lot but this is the sentiment which was echoed by ex-lead developer Ghostcrawler here. Say what you will about GC but he is one of the few people who's spoken publicly about what drives player behavior in WoW and has actually seen Blizzard's retention data.

[Laqweeta]

It's not really the cost that would cause you to quit. It's the fact that you can no longer justify paying $15/mo for a video game that you don't play that much. I link this a lot but this is the sentiment which was echoed by ex-lead developer Ghostcrawler here. Say what you will about GC but he is one of the few people who's spoken publicly about what drives player behavior in WoW and has actually seen Blizzard's retention data.

I think I’m the rare type of person that literally lets my sub continue even if I don’t play. Hell im subbed to wow just so I can post on their forums lmao.

[crakerjack]

No, there's really no reason to stay around. I prefer TBC to vanilla just because things were more balanced. My biggest gripe with classic was that not every spec for each class was viable in raiding. If you wanted to play a subpar spec, you still could, but it felt unrewarding to min/max and play your absolute best, yet still do abysmal dps compared to someone playing a superior spec/class and only parsing 40%.

[Pohut]

You are gleaming incorrect conclusions from incomplete data. You can see a trend of downward subscriber levels but who's to say that people quitting WoW remained exactly the same as it was from Classic through WotLK, they simply didn't offset the number of people quitting with new subscribers? You can't possibly know that. That's why any argument which uses subscriber levels to support it is ultimately completely flawed -- you're only looking at one half of the information.

What are you even talking about? Blizzard never reported "subscriber loss", they only ever reported total subscriber numbers and those been trending down since WotLK. And recently they completely stopped reporting those as they were getting way too embarrassing.

[Relapses]

What are you even talking about? Blizzard never reported "subscriber loss", they only ever reported total subscriber numbers and those been trending down since WotLK. And recently they completely stopped reporting those as they were getting way too embarrassing.

I'd strongly encourage you to actually read the words that I wrote before replying again.

edit: I just noticed this but Blizzard did not stop reporting subscriber numbers "because they were embarrassed." This is absolutely fucking ridiculous. They stopped reporting them because they never fucking mattered to players in the first place and Blizzard has other metrics to communicate the relative success of their products to investors without relying on subscriber information.

[BSwitch]

*This is not a shaming thread, if you are going to shit on people, please stop and go find something else to do.

Assuming you or your guild did not manage to clear Naxx by the time TBC servers are up, will you stay put on transferring til you've successfully cleared it? Or you just love classic so much you won't be transferring your characters and still play classic, or you just prefer to start fresh on TBC.

Just trying to gauge to see how many people will stay on classic by then.

Thankfully, and somewhat surprisingly, I've found myself in a top 10 guild on our server. We're pretty casual (read: non-optimal comps, wbuffs not required, no required professions, racial optimization or specific specs, etc.), but have enough drive to always (mostly...always...) do our best, and thus have had very little difficulty at any point in raids. Whether it's because we're better, the challenge is lower than we remember, or whatever, our belief is that Naxx will likewise present us little challenge, and at this point I fully expect a week-one clear.

This is great. Now, when it comes to TBC, I hated it last time. Also, I was un-guilded, didn't raid once, and did very few dungeons. It was mostly a solo game for me, due to life at the time. Going forward with this team, I'm more stoked than ever to see what I missed first time around, and can not wait for TBC! Before Classic launched, I was happy to say "I'll play just Classic for the next 10 years". I was wrong. I won't mind moving forward, and that's largely due to the fact that now I will have done everything I set out to do. Haven't done all classes, but on my main - I've done all that I cared to do. It's been great, but I'll be ready to move on.

At this point, I'm now saying "Once Wrath comes out, that's the game I'll play for 10 years." I think that's a much more reasonable thing to claim, because with the inclusion of Achievements, and their pre-account-wide state, there's literally all the content in the game to do 10 times over. That, with the inclusion of LFD will make solo-play much more doable, and the raid content in Wrath is so solid I think the replayability will likewise be as solid.

So yes, I'll move into TBC asap (though hope I can copy characters to Classic just for fun), and when Wrath likely drops, I'll jump in there and end my time in WoW when I've finally done it all. Everything post-Wrath is a step down imo. Some good, sure, but just not as much my cup of tea. What a time to be alive!

[Pohut]

I'd strongly encourage you to actually read the words that I wrote before replying again.

edit: I just noticed this but Blizzard did not stop reporting subscriber numbers "because they were embarrassed." This is absolutely fucking ridiculous. They stopped reporting them because they never fucking mattered to players in the first place and Blizzard has other metrics to communicate the relative success of their products to investors without relying on subscriber information.

Yes. Of course. That makes total sense. When the subs were above 10 million they were reporting them every quarter and in every interview, every advertising blurb and anywhere they could.
As soon as they drop below 5 million and downward dynamic became really obvious they stopped reporting them because:

they never **** mattered to players in the first place and Blizzard has other metrics to communicate the relative success of their products to investors without relying on subscriber information.

Thanks for explaining this to me. I am not as experienced in interpreting commercially sensitive information as you.

[Unholyground]

It would be very stupid to force you to go over or at least not give you a pre-made level 60. I have a feeling everyone will get a certain number of copies per account with a gold limit and Bob is your uncle.

[SkagenRora]

What's this? I thought everybody wanted Vanilla and were going to play it for years and years.

Yeah, i thought that as well, considering some private servers live for a long time.

I'm quite suprised people are willing to quit Classic that easy.

[Lubefist]

It would be very stupid to force you to go over or at least not give you a pre-made level 60. I have a feeling everyone will get a certain number of copies per account with a gold limit and Bob is your uncle.

This solution would be pretty much the best I've seen suggested.

[Relapses]

Yes. Of course. That makes total sense. When the subs were above 10 million they were reporting them every quarter and in every interview, every advertising blurb and anywhere they could.

Because when subscriber levels were at 10 million Blizzard had... WoW. And that was it. In 2015 they had WoW, Diablo 3, Hearthstone, Heroes of the Storm, OverWatch and many more. It's less important to show WoW's subscription levels when the business is less about just WoW and more about an entire line-up of different games. Besides that, as I've said multiple times, the subscriber levels only tell half of the story because we have no fucking idea how many new players came into the game in the intervals when subscriber levels either went up or down. Players love to make shitty fucking arguments that correlate the quality of the game with subscriber losses but the actual story is far more complicated and the number one reason most people quit WoW (they moved the fuck on with their lives) doesn't make for nearly as sensational a story as "{x feature} ruined the game and this subscriber graph proves it!"

As soon as they drop below 5 million and downward dynamic became really obvious they stopped reporting them because:

they never **** mattered to players in the first place and Blizzard has other metrics to communicate the relative success of their products to investors without relying on subscriber information.Thanks for explaining this to me. I am not as experienced in interpreting commercially sensitive information as you.

Thanks for explaining this to me. I am not as experienced in interpreting commercially sensitive information as you.

Because looking at information from the most cynical perspective imaginable makes you enlightened? Congratulations, dude. You figured it all out. Blizzard sucks and they're "embarrassed" that random internet forum posters can't make shitty analogies correlating subscriber losses with features or expansions they personally disliked.

[Kralljin]

Yeah, i thought that as well, considering some private servers live for a long time.

Private servers keep rolling out new servers, roll out overtuned servers or shut down and said players move to another private server.

[XDurionX]

Nobody will remain in classic, not depending on whether tbc releases or not.

[Cæli]

i'll keep paying the sub, so of course I'll play it from time to time, as well as retail