Is it a Smart Business move to make "Classic" for all previous Expacs?

[Relapses]

At the risk of sounding like a shill, I just want to call out that what you’ve done is put “mitigating risk at scale” in some convoluted bucket of bad business practices and dismissed the fact that re-releasing Classic content, as is being discussed here, doesn’t have any of the opportunities you’re describing.

Don’t get me wrong: ATVI acquisition is not something I believe contributed positively to the health of Blizzard’s customers. I don’t love the path they’ve taken with retail, but someone had to ask a bunch of non-gamer bottom-liners for a bunch of money to re-release a 17 year old game, in a market that’s largely focused on tech advancement. That, in itself, is not an easy task.

It's impressive the lengths of cognitive dissonance players will put themselves through to preserve their headcanon of "MODERN BLIZZ = BAD; OLD BLIZZ = GOOD."

[Niwes]

At the risk of sounding like a shill, I just want to call out that what you’ve done is put “mitigating risk at scale” in some convoluted bucket of bad business practices and dismissed the fact that re-releasing Classic content, as is being discussed here, doesn’t have any of the opportunities you’re describing.

Don’t get me wrong: ATVI acquisition is not something I believe contributed positively to the health of Blizzard’s customers. I don’t love the path they’ve taken with retail, but someone had to ask a bunch of non-gamer bottom-liners for a bunch of money to re-release a 17 year old game, in a market that’s largely focused on tech advancement. That, in itself, is not an easy task.

i dont disagree. but so what ? in reality you can put classic out of the scope anyway. because its a finished product. its simple a direct, easy and low investment vs fix sub dollars. there will be no mesh calculation or anything. no quarter numbers. no evolvment. no development. they simply invest x time and x money and run it as it is, for y money (sub) in exchange.

so, that said, this means company/market/business wise Classic has no other meaning in the grand scheme of things, than trading i.e. a stone or a piece of wood against money. so Classic has no/zero/nada influence on their business concepts. this means there is no tradeoff for „maybe bad for playerbase“ etc and nothing to weight against here.

thats the reason why some ppl think longterm its a fault. because when you probably do damage to your customer base or split customer base or just CHANGE your customer base, you wanna have something in return, for that risk. but this thing is fixed. its not scalable. its not enhanceable. it can not developed further, nor evolved or customized to your needs or your changed player base. its Classic. its finished. its like a stone.

the reason why ppl call it „dangerous longterm“ or why i say its just good for the fast money is exactly this. think about the following: you have 2 things as a company: a complex car. and a stone. the car is modern. the car can evolve. the car can be adapted to the market, new users and changed situations. you make good money with that car. and now you have additionally stones. you know ppl want stones. you know you give ppl stones and they give you a flat amount of money. thats it. its good and fast money. you can sell stones. but what if the CEO says „our analysts detected that when we sell stones we are no longer seen as a car producer on market and this could damage our car market“ ? thats exactly the same situation. you can grab all the money until you sold all the stones. but what if after a few years ppl stop being interessted in your cars and you loose money there. its very hard to weigh one with the other.

and thats the reason why its a shortterm fast money safe bet, but longterm this could be critical for retail.

PS: with „until stones are all sold“ i mean: Classic is played longterm mostly by „old“ ppl that like the „old“ mmorpg style. but these ppl get older and older and somewhere in the future they stop playing. at latest when they die. young ppl are definetelly not the target audience of Classic. ofc, they come to have a look. but they do this solely bc they have a sub from retail anyway. and after 4-8 weeks they stop and never come back. i bet my ass that the ppl, that solely have a sub for Classic and are under 20, makes not even 2% of the Classic customers. and this means its a dead horse. you can ride it until it dies. in fact: until the old gamers die. like the stones. you can sell them until you sold the last stone. thats it. nothing to evolve, change, attract young ppl. adapt to market etc. Classic is the stones.

[Akka]

Classic already proved how boring and repetitive WoW was and that people quily lost interest soon after a new phase was launched. This will be the case even quicker for most of the xpacs.

Wait, are you speaking of SL here ?
Because Classic has maintained its numbers FAR BETTER than everyone expected (obviously a lot of people left, but far less than what was planned and what the doomsayers were saying on the forums), so if Classic has proved anything, it's the opposite.

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no it isn't
Classic biggest reason of success was it got released with BFA, a serious competitor for worst exp with wod, if classic was released in legion it would have portion of its playerbase

Completely idiotic comment that shows how willfully and deliberately ignorant you are on the subject. Most people playing Classic aren't interested in retail, period, so the supposed "quality" of the expac has little influence on Classic players.

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It's impressive the lengths of cognitive dissonance players will put themselves through to preserve their headcanon of "MODERN BLIZZ = BAD; OLD BLIZZ = GOOD."

You don't need any cognitive dissonance to notice that nearly everything that made Blizzard a famous developper with good reputation happened before being bought by Activision. You need a lot to not notice that Blizzard reputation has changed quite a lot since then, though.

[Prag]

You don't need any cognitive dissonance to notice that nearly everything that made Blizzard a famous developper with good reputation happened before being bought by Activision. You need a lot to not notice that Blizzard reputation has changed quite a lot since then, though.

People like to attach their satisfaction of a product to their approval of the creator in general discussion, but there are plenty of examples where that’s failed (see Cyberpunk).

We’ll see what happens with Dreamhaven titles. That’s “old Blizzard”, and it’ll be interesting to test the position vs people just liking the title (Warcraft) and not liking the design direction.

[Aphrel]

They are gonna keep making classic rereleases and they will put more and more p2w features such as leveling boosts, cash shop mounts and so on.

[sam86]

Completely idiotic comment that shows how willfully and deliberately ignorant you are on the subject. Most people playing Classic aren't interested in retail, period, so the supposed "quality" of the expac has little influence on Classic players.

yeah, i mean Asmo-whatever who is the most famous wow player who played classic literally left it to retail, of course i'm ignorant and not well informed and actually see myself how many did that

[Low Hanging Fruit]

If it's working why stop? It's obvious the WoW team struggles with making content even in non-pandemic times. Classic and Classic expansion releases give the brand much needed bumps that it wouldn't otherwise have. If they coordinate the releases it can keep WoW more in the spotlight and retain players attached to certain eras. So its just insanely obvious to keep releasing them. If the last one worked then they will make the next. This will continue until one or probably two of them fail to meet expectations and I am willing to bet those expectations aren't as high as one would think because it's all looked at as WoW as a whole.

[Akka]

yeah, i mean Asmo-whatever who is the most famous wow player who played classic literally left it to retail, of course i'm ignorant and not well informed and actually see myself how many did that

Oh gawd, Asmo left Classic to retail, that's SO relevant ! He's like the spokeperson of the Classic community !

Or you know, you can just a) open your eyes and notice most Classic players don't give a crap about retail, or even easier b) notice that Blizzard themselves said that there is very little overlap between Classic and retail players.
Oh, of course there is also c) keep throwing idiotic shit, I guess.

[Varaben]

Adding options and value to the monthly subscription proposition will only help sustain the game's appeal. There's multiple phases of the game's 15+ years of content for anyone's personal flavor. Considering "dead" games like FFXI still runs on enough subscriptions to justify the servers, I'm pretty sure WoW which was wildly more popular will be able to do so all things considered.

What's crazy is they can always do "fresh" servers later on down the line which will again draw people back to the game. Because in 2 years going into a Classic server that has a 4 year old economy is probably not going to be a good time for a variety of reasons. But restarting the phases on a new server might be really fun if they can actually do that within the game itself.

[loras]

I'm not here making a definitive claim that it is or isn't a smart business move to create a "Classic" edition of each previous expansion. Posing the question to the forum instead.


For better or for worse, WoW Classic had success. Blizzard taking surveys last year to gauge interest in a BC Classic must have been a sign that despite what the talking heads of the gaming world said about WoW Classic, it did well enough or continues to do well enough to justify spending time/money/resources to create BC Classic. And what if BC Classic does well? What if it does better than WoW Classic? There are a lot of "what if" scenarios that come into question when asking this question.


In my opinion, I think it is smart business decision... and that is if they keep the current model of having an active World of Warcraft subscription to access the Classic editions. I'm not going to pretend I know what it all takes to recreate those expansions as they were and keep them going as it goes with WoW Classic, but WoW Classic's cycle is over. The servers aren't shutting down anytime soon, if ever, so wouldn't that be the same with BC Classic and any other Classic versions of expansions if they choose to make?


And personally I would love to be able to pick up and play any of the expansions as they were back then, whenever I wanted to.


I know there are posters here that are more business savvy than I am and could counter my points above on why it's not a smart business move and I would love to see them.

Anything up 'till wotlk would at least have the added value of predating the cataclysm world-revamp. Beyond that i'm not so sure that there is a point.

[Zyrinx]

Idk, but my feeling is WotLK Classic is gonna be YUUUUUGE.

[Relapses]

You don't need any cognitive dissonance to notice that nearly everything that made Blizzard a famous developper with good reputation happened before being bought by Activision. You need a lot to not notice that Blizzard reputation has changed quite a lot since then, though.

A company changed over the course of 20 fucking years... how shocking! It's fine to observe that modern Blizzard isn't the same as "old Blizzard," what I take offense to are the delusional players who can't seem to process that the game changing in ways to appease its current audience doesn't necessarily mean they're doing things implicitly in spite of its "old" audience. These arguments reek of nostalgia and are often very thinly veiled No True Scotsman logical fallacies.

[Prag]

A company changed over the course of 20 fucking years... how shocking! It's fine to observe that modern Blizzard isn't the same as "old Blizzard," what I take offense to are the delusional players who can't seem to process that the game changing in ways to appease its current audience doesn't necessarily mean they're doing things implicitly in spite of its "old" audience. These arguments reek of nostalgia and are often very thinly veiled No True Scotsman logical fallacies.

Well don't you dare tell them to go back to retail go to another game. That response is reserved.

[Kagthul]

Entire guilds controlling devilsaur spawns and such.

I assure you this happened in Vanilla on servers with actual active communities and large guilds. Un’Goro was an absolute warzone on Bleeding Hollow back in the day.

To the topic:

No.

After LK, there is no point because that is the end of the “Classic” era of the game with the old specs and talent trees (before the implementation of “only some specs get some skills/spells”), crafting not being neutered, etc.

Its a pretty clear delineation. Cata was the start of NeuWow.

[sam86]

Oh gawd, Asmo left Classic to retail, that's SO relevant ! He's like the spokeperson of the Classic community !

Or you know, you can just a) open your eyes and notice most Classic players don't give a crap about retail, or even easier b) notice that Blizzard themselves said that there is very little overlap between Classic and retail players.
Oh, of course there is also c) keep throwing idiotic shit, I guess.

pls show source for b, and not sure who is ignorant when u ignore the most popular wow player right now (btw i don't even watch him, but i know who he is)

[Prag]

pls show source for b, and not sure who is ignorant when u ignore the most popular wow player right now (btw i don't even watch him, but i know who he is)

He’s literally streaming Classic and TBC right now.

[shise]

If you want to create a successfully game, you have to ignore economy and profitability. You have to focus on gaming quality. Only then the numbers will start to flow.

Mentality A: Original WoW developers did that, and so we still play the game purely because of how good it once was.
Mentality B: Current leaders and developers are making developing WoW with profitability as the main focus, and what they are achieving is making WoW go downhill faster than ever.


How does this relate with your question? simple:

Classic, BC and WotLK were in a league of their own, probably over 90% of us would agree on that. Those were the parts of the game created under mentality A. So of course it is a good proven business success and releasing them again will bring some good cash flow. But this is an artificial cash flow, which is worrisome. If they would drop the Mentality B on retail, and do what was PROVEN to work (mentality A), there would be no need for this, because we would all be hooked to retail like crazy, so why bother playing old content back anyway.
As it stands now... a massive chuck of the player base will be on classic and BC... so no, I don´t see how this is a good long term business idea. Clearly they do not care about the game´s future, but about milking as much as they can out of it.

[Th3Scourge]

The fact that classic/TBC/D2:R etc are so popular and in demand is such an indictment on modern gaming and the state of modern wow.

[froschhure]

Why, Move along and create wow 2 or wow+

enough with this "tailored past" - If ppl want to see how wow was that age move to pserver (low - to no cost)

[Huzzaa]

Why, Move along and create wow 2 or wow+

enough with this "tailored past" - If ppl want to see how wow was that age move to pserver (low - to no cost)

Yeah you see I'd run my own BC server as well, if ActiVi$ion wouldn't come at my door with court orders and demands.