It's impossible to tell if the drive for Classic is the majority of people, however.. statistically speaking, current retail players are by far the minority when it comes to overall WoW players since Vanilla launch.
WoW has had as of late Legion IIRC, 100 million accounts made since the launch of the game.
That is a huge number in comparison to how many people are actually playing BfA right now, so there might be some merit to the thought that Classic has a boxers chance to bring back potentially a lot of people if Blizzard handles their PR correctly.
If you have the knowledge available to you, you can level any class to 60 within a weeks worth of playtime. Hell the current record is just over 2 days playtime on a druid.
It's really not 10 times longer.
While Retail doesn't need classic to aid in it's demise it most certainly will.
The MMO community is starving for a good MMO and Classic brings all of that to the table.
Many people completely forget how immersive the world is with classic and the community that evolves from being immersed in a game that truly is a "WORLD".
A lot of people are downplaying the success classic will have.
To be honest, the reason people won't return to classic is the fear of the addiction. Once you're sucked in, getting out is very hard.
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lol.... Vanilla is at minimum 1 1/2 years of progression.
You cannot play classic through in a couple months, especially not with the content release schedule.
Retail is something you can play through in a couple of weeks....
Day 1 - Purchase the game and get an instant 110, level to 120.
Day 2 - Start free loot
Day 3 - Geared enough to pvp & progress for mythic raids
Day 10 - Geared enough for Mythic Raids & Ez Mode Content
Here's classic for you.
Day 10 - Hit max level
Day 25 - Geared for Tier 1 Raids
Day 120 - Geared for Tier 2 Raids
See the difference?
Classic will kill current WoW in the same way Wildstar, Age of Conan, Warhammer Online, and Vanguard did.
I highly doubt enough people will leave live permanently for there to be any real threat. It will find an audience for sure but I just don't see anyone who plays the current game that never played Vanilla or BC wanting to dump that much time into the game. Hell I was there in Vanilla and i don't even know if I will. I only have so much time to game these days and don't exactly feel like spending hours just to get anything done.
When I was 16 and in High School? Of course I wanted that but I am 30 now. I will pop in and enjoy it but only as a supplement to live when I don't have anything to really do.
Classic will be popping off for about a week or 2 in the beginning just because its something new for a lot of ppl that didn't get to play it, then most of the younger player base will go running back to retail once they figure out what classic really is.
You asked a question and I gave you the answer. You might not agree with or fully understand the answer, but, it is correct because of reasons.”
.. Except you couldn't get "all there is to get in a month", because not only does take around a month to level up and get ALL 40 PEOPLE set up for certain raids, you also need to find 40 people wanting to have the same schedule as you do.
Or did you think that you could solo raids?
Secondly, with that attitude, why even play WoW at all?
Clearly you only care about clearing content as fast as humanly possible without even thinking about why you're clearing that content. You're definitely not the demographic they're aiming for so you don't have to worry your pretty little head over that either way.
And your point being.. what exactly?
If you don't like it, then move on out of the Classic forum.
As I've already explained, you aren't the demographic for Classic and any arguments you have are in the end completely pointless, a waste of space if you will.
Blizzard will still make the project, people will still play the game for a LONG time, regardless of how upset you are over the fact that people might enjoy something.
Considering a certain popular non-sanctioned server had 150k concurrent accounts active, I think Classic will punch way above that.
Of course, estimation is impossible but there'll be quite a few people.
And yeah, even if it "only" has 200k players, that's still more than enough for Blizz.
Why are you talking in absolutes?
Secondly, we've been doing the same content for 14 years on retail. Appearances may be different, but it's functionally the same game in every system that makes up WoW. The only difference is they've removed most of the RPG elements and thrown in QoL elements instead.
I've just never understood people who are so inherently fucking salty over people wanting to play a certain game, to go "YEAH WELL WHY DON'T YOU MARRY IT AND PLAY FOR 400 YEARS STRAIGHT, SEE HOW YOU LIKE IT?"
Like what the fuck is that argument?
maybe at first as some people try it.. but i suspect a lot of the newer players in WoW will miss the conveniences and not even realize how many they have till they are gone.
Member: Dragon Flight Alpha Club, Member since 7/20/22
Everyone is completely over-rating Classic. It's a terrible game. And I've played WoW since May 2005. It will not kill any other game, including its sister LIVE server.
I am someone who is excited and waiting to play classic wow and I never even purchased this most recent expansion.
I know many of my friends (we all played since vanilla) also want to play.
This is a small sample pool, but my suspicion is that many people who want to play Vanilla are not people that will necessarily play live.
So Blizzard will certainly get older plays to sub who never intended to sub for retail with the release of vanilla which I think is great for the game in general.