[Speculation] Classic WoW will kill retail

[Perkunas]

Good laugh, thanks OP.

The novelty will wear off with most people before realising how cancer the grind actually is, if Blizzard does indeed leave things as they were with zero quality of life additions that were present in the later expansions. That's not to say Classic isn't fun to some extent, I'll play it myself but I'm not going to invest a whole lot of time in it over current WoW though. Way I see it, it'll be that nice little game you go to when you can't think of anything else to do on current WoW and want something different.

I honestly think that's part of the plan. It's something to kill time for the majority of people when they would normally unsub waiting for new content. Shit, running a bigass AV every weekend alone would keep me subbed during a content lull.

[Deficineiron]

Nope.
I think that what they really want, is for them to do a good Classic (so as to get good PR), but at the same time having Classic to somewhat fail (so they can confirm that they are "right" doing what they do, and able to say "told you so").

So I think they'll do a decent work about Classic, but not put any kind of real effort to make it successful.

I never underestimate the power of ego to account for otherwise unfathomable business decisions, but in this case, morhaime's bonus on release year will very likely have a component tied to classic success. Whatever else I think of A/B, they want classic to be financially successful.

[voidillusion]

Nope.
I think that what they really want, is for them to do a good Classic (so as to get good PR), but at the same time having Classic to somewhat fail (so they can confirm that they are "right" doing what they do, and able to say "told you so").

So I think they'll do a decent work about Classic, but not put any kind of real effort to make it successful.

Nah i don't think so. They are profit driven so its obvious to me that once classic is online they wan't it to be sucessfull and profitable. I do agree that they might want it not to be too sucessfull, but that's a different story. In the end i believe they are aiming for sucess.