Do you think Classic will Overtake Retail?

[justandulas]

huh weird! I'm an "ordinary joe" yet it offers me a top quality experience.

Same. I’m married with kids and full time job and I can’t wait for classic. Retail would need to burn it all to the ground and rebuild it in classic and tbc image to win me back.

People acting like their own personal time is everyone’s.

Fun fact: the average age of a vanilla wow player was 36

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Just last night the mythic+ world invitational tournament was getting DWARFED by vanilla pvp and scarlet monetary runs.

How anyone thinks Bfa is in a good spot vs classic is a bit delusional on it.

Classic will utterly eclipse live at launch, one month in, 3, 6, it doesn’t matter.

Blizz will need another legion quality expac to pull me back

[Sensa1]

No, he mixes up a management book about career and real life issues with the behaviour of people in a computer game. First is esssnetial for life, second is something people do after they came home AFTER having to work for their career. Last is about sparetime, about having something else than working in shifts or for a management department. Playing a game should be completely separated from real life organization, even if games use tricks to engage players you could also use at jobs.

Literally, bellular uses a management training book on killing pixel bosses in a fairy tale adventure game. Which means, he uses the wrong philosophy for the wrong place.

If books like that influence game design, we exactly get millions of people who are not entirely adresses with the game and a toxic organized player crowd who plays the game as like they would work at a job.

I like your idealism but the fact of the matter is that games are very much designed using the same basic principles and incentives as work especially in MMO-RPG type of games where a significant investment of time and skill is required, usually in cooperation with others (to varying degrees), to achieve a desired outcome and promote a sense of accomplishment - or in other words work by a different name. Other work like analogies exist in WoW like players (workers) having both job titles and job descriptions (tank/dps/healers), hierarchical structures referred to as Guilds (place of employment) with Leaders (bosses / supervisors) who reward bonuses (gear) using a variety of methods (DKp / Loot Councils) to determine who has "earned" or deserves gear. There's also a HR dept (Game Master's) enforcing rules and disciplining players (workers) who violate them.

You're right about it not being essential to life in that it doesn't put a roof over your head, pay the bills and support a family, except for the streamers and E-sport players, but it is still work-like and Bellular use of an analogous theory from the work world was more than appropriate in this instance. The best games make the "work" fun and those that don't fail.

It would be great if all of our leisure activities were as carefree as when we were as children. Watch youngsters just running around laughing and giggling and getting pure joy from it. But that's not how video games work no matter how offensive the concept may be to your sensibilities.

But going back to the point of Bellular's video - the intrinsic rewards and mechanisms in WoW have drastically changed as WoW tries to be all things to all people and I think he's hit the nail on the head. My takeaway, as noted above, was that it was a mistake for Blizzard to try to use WoW to compete with games that had a different reward structure instead of using other IP's to do it. They partly did it out of greed imho and killed the golden goose in the process (please read my initial post on Bellular's video for the full context of my argument).

[Mirain1]

Your definition of top quality experience is weird odd then.

Or maybe just subjective.

[shyguybman]

Same. I’m married with kids and full time job and I can’t wait for classic. Retail would need to burn it all to the ground and rebuild it in classic and tbc image to win me back.

People acting like their own personal time is everyone’s.

Fun fact: the average age of a vanilla wow player was 36

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Just last night the mythic+ world invitational tournament was getting DWARFED by vanilla pvp and scarlet monetary runs.

How anyone thinks Bfa is in a good spot vs classic is a bit delusional on it.

Classic will utterly eclipse live at launch, one month in, 3, 6, it doesn’t matter.

Blizz will need another legion quality expac to pull me back

M+ tournament starting at 11pm PST (2am EST) in a game people are tired of or a game people haven't played in 15 years? I wonder what will win in terms of viewership.

Asmongold got 100K viewers doing like deadmines or armory but he also gets just as much when he clears the new raids on the first day in BFA.

[Somewhatconcerned]

LOL never.

Lots of rose tinted glasses about to be shattered.

[Samuraijake]

its just a little weird how everyone considers themselves a Director in blizzard accounting. Just because you dont have data to backup something doesnt meant blizzard doesnt have an archive of everything.

Imagine a company having access to exclusive information and data.. that you..a regular joe schmo... does not have access too.

[Roar-Powah]

Sadly he's omitting why people quit MMOs all together. They began to stop appealing to the RPG crowd and tried to appeal to the general market. If the standard for measuring this involves, lets say, a ruler, with Divinity Original Sin on one end, and Destiny 2 on the other, Vanilla-Wrath WoW was closer to Divinity on that ruler, whereas WoD-Present is closer to Destiny 2.

Building a character is basically not a thing anymore. You're handed almost everything with minimal effort, because apparently the journey means nothing, and the "journey" need only encompass the questing experience. No class quests, no in-depth talent system, just the cookie cutter. That's only really 1 example, and the problem extends past WoW as well.

Wildstar is an enigma, it tried to exist on the Divinity side of the ruler, but ended up failing anyway. The character building and depth was all there for that game, but the questing experience was absolutely mind-numbing. Every environment felt the same, and none of the characters were likable. Gear also felt very unimportant in that game.

GW2 retains a lot of things on the "Divinity side" with detailed talent systems and customization, but falters with it's rather high system requirements, as well as the poor optimization and limited team.

Rift went to shit a few years back, but was an overall good game until that happened. I don't play it, so I could never pinpoint the moment it occurred.

SWTOR nearly died trying to exist as a competitor to WoW and switched to a solo-narrative style game, which it is much more enjoyable as.

It's a bit unfair to point to data that says "everyone quit mmos" without acknowledging that most mmos abandoned the tenets that made WoW popular in the first place, never had them to begin with, or were fundamentally flawed from day 1. The genre is MMORPG, and the RPG part of that was completely sucked out, or at least in the case of WoW, replaced with quite literal RP in the form of garrisons and class halls.

I know I'm just a drop in the ocean but i will tell you my experience of playing these mmos and why i quit.


Wildstar - Was just plain boring, UI was a mess and the whole world felt crammed. Latency played a big part in my quitting as well.

GW2 - decent game, just didn't like the non holy trinity system, if it had the trinity system in it i would be still playing. Has the same issue with modern wow with the way they handle servers, people are just there and there is no need to get to know anyone. It's a single player game with some multiplayer aspects thrown in.

ToR - ruined by the cartel shop, and the game engine that runs it is complete shit. I did raid and PvP and it just had too many damn bugs as well.

Rift - It was an OK game, just nothing special about it and their talent tree system (souls) was messy to say the least. I do remember that animations where bad tho.

Modern WoW- is no longer a RPG, it's a game that you just collect stuff in, with no sense of community. WoWs combat system (before the cgd change) is very nice that no other MMO has come close too. Now with crz / sharding it kills what a rpg is meant to be about, but without these systems of illusion the game would be completely dead.

Now Classic is what I'm after in a MMO, i remember classic very well i know what I'm getting my self into and I'm looking forward to a version of WoW that made me like the game in the first place. No TF/WF, no crz and sharding, no LFR bullshit, no WQ, no AP grinds, just a pure MMORPG. I hope classic does better than modern WoW, it might take the devs a few pegs down off their mighty thrones which they need.(Or as i like to call it "head up ones own ass syndrome")

[Wyrt]

I have 0 interest in playing classic myself, but I think it'll overtake retail because BfA is bad and the novelty of being able to play something people haven't been able to in years. Though, to me, Classic says "Grinding and shallow classes" which is also what BfA says to me.

If we had a proper good expansion on live then I don't think classic would overtake it.

[justandulas]

Problem is progression ladders is they'll bring back feeder guilds. Classic will only appeal to hardcore raiders. Because at max level. All you could do is stomp undergeared casuals in bgs or wpvp. Dungeon gear was useless compared to even tier 1. There will be an infux. Because bfa is bad. But a huge drop off I predict.

The thing is, feeder guilds are ok. Yes, i know it sucks and i've been there more than once watching a geared tank/healer walk off to greener pastures... but the point is there ARE greener pastures.

If your guild is stuck at ladder step D, and you desperately want to hit E, you will have options. It's a true ladder progression where sometimes you may have to choose progression over guild/friendship. It actually enforces the social bonds of the game, that are missing today (and have been for a long time due to QoL added to the game)

Secondly, nothing is more fun in WoW than getting geared and walking around a BG like Sauron in LOTR opener. Scaling PVP does not belong in an MMORPG, where the entire POINT is to get up... except that gear is irrelevant outside of just a handful of content? No thanks. A piece of gear should be equally amazing in every aspect of the game from pve, pvp, wpvp, dungeons, raids, etc...

EXAMPLE: Legion i would get the best raid trinkets, but you couldnt even use them in pvp making PVP absolutely worthless to me.

People WANT to get geared and stomp noobs.

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I know I'm just a drop in the ocean but i will tell you my experience of playing these mmos and why i quit.


Wildstar - Was just plain boring, UI was a mess and the whole world felt crammed. Latency played a big part in my quitting as well.

GW2 - decent game, just didn't like the non holy trinity system, if it had the trinity system in it i would be still playing. Has the same issue with modern wow with the way they handle servers, people are just there and there is no need to get to know anyone. It's a single player game with some multiplayer aspects thrown in.

ToR - ruined by the cartel shop, and the game engine that runs it is complete shit. I did raid and PvP and it just had too many damn bugs as well.

Rift - It was an OK game, just nothing special about it and their talent tree system (souls) was messy to say the least. I do remember that animations where bad tho.

Modern WoW- is no longer a RPG, it's a game that you just collect stuff in, with no sense of community. WoWs combat system (before the cgd change) is very nice that no other MMO has come close too. Now with crz / sharding it kills what a rpg is meant to be about, but without these systems of illusion the game would be completely dead.

Now Classic is what I'm after in a MMO, i remember classic very well i know what I'm getting my self into and I'm looking forward to a version of WoW that made me like the game in the first place. No TF/WF, no crz and sharding, no LFR bullshit, no WQ, no AP grinds, just a pure MMORPG. I hope classic does better than modern WoW, it might take the devs a few pegs down off their mighty thrones which they need.(Or as i like to call it "head up ones own ass syndrome")

MMORPG players didn't leave MMORPG's behind, MMORPG's left us behind in favor of cheap MMO ARPG mechanics that appeal to the lowest common denominator of MMORPG players.

Classic is what i'm after too, my friend. People are sleeping on it's appeal, but there are thousands like us who just want a real MMORPG again and not a bad parody of one (BFA)

What ruined ToR for me (besides the engine) was they lacked any cross realm features for pvp/pve and they spread us out too thinly across like 150 realms at launch... and then waited too long to smash them all together again into a super realm (sound familiar?)

Hail to the king! Classic is back

[Relapses]

The thing is, feeder guilds are ok. Yes, i know it sucks and i've been there more than once watching a geared tank/healer walk off to greener pastures... but the point is there ARE greener pastures.

If your guild is stuck at ladder step D, and you desperately want to hit E, you will have options. It's a true ladder progression where sometimes you may have to choose progression over guild/friendship. It actually enforces the social bonds of the game, that are missing today (and have been for a long time due to QoL added to the game)

Secondly, nothing is more fun in WoW than getting geared and walking around a BG like Sauron in LOTR opener. Scaling PVP does not belong in an MMORPG, where the entire POINT is to get up... except that gear is irrelevant outside of just a handful of content? No thanks. A piece of gear should be equally amazing in every aspect of the game from pve, pvp, wpvp, dungeons, raids, etc...

EXAMPLE: Legion i would get the best raid trinkets, but you couldnt even use them in pvp making PVP absolutely worthless to me.

People WANT to get geared and stomp noobs.

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MMORPG players didn't leave MMORPG's behind, MMORPG's left us behind in favor of cheap MMO ARPG mechanics that appeal to the lowest common denominator of MMORPG players.

Classic is what i'm after too, my friend. People are sleeping on it's appeal, but there are thousands like us who just want a real MMORPG again and not a bad parody of one (BFA)

What ruined ToR for me (besides the engine) was they lacked any cross realm features for pvp/pve and they spread us out too thinly across like 150 realms at launch... and then waited too long to smash them all together again into a super realm (sound familiar?)

Hail to the king! Classic is back

Ah, the ol "invisible playerbase." Millions of bored neckbeards waiting with baited breath to shower Blizzard with wads of cash the second Classic is released.

How people can realistically think like this is honestly perplexing.

[Cracked]

Ok so I had to find the video. You tell me if this is the first thing you saw about Wildstar, the supposedly next great mmo, if this would make you want to play it. It was the first thing on the Carbine website when I first read about Wildstar. Soooo, yeah. That was the most attention that game ever got from me, not for being a shitty game, but for being a shitty advertiser/unserious/shitty concept/art for children.

[Vynestra]

Ah, the ol "invisible playerbase." Millions of bored neckbeards waiting with baited breath to shower Blizzard with wads of cash the second Classic is released.

How people can realistically think like this is honestly perplexing.

not sure, any of those neckbeards prob play retail currently if they love warcraft that much.

classic wasn't all that and a bag of chips. some people like it, great. This thread feels beyond pointless at this point. I mean let's wait and see what happens, discussing it endlessly wont do shit because we will never convince the other side they're wrong and vica versa.

it seems so pointless to keep arguing about it.

just wait and see.

[MoanaLisa]

This thread feels beyond pointless at this point.

To be perfectly honest the thread hasn't really had a point from the start. Blizzard is very unlikely to reveal which game has more players and since it's all under one umbrella subscription it doesn't matter who is winning. The "win" for everyone is if both games do well. I can only imagine there will be a lot of people crossing back and forth especially when we have content down periods in retail. And that's great. If either game is perceived as "losing" then it's a loss for everyone.

But people want to talk about it so here we are.

[KyleEverett]

If people really wanted hard MMOs they'd still be playing EQ's progression servers. They aren't so Classic will see an initial spike that'll fade as people realize, "Damn levelling is really boring." Eventually they'll have to add content or change something which will piss off the No Changers too.

[Big Thanks]

To be perfectly honest the thread hasn't really had a point from the start. Blizzard is very unlikely to reveal which game has more players and since it's all under one umbrella subscription it doesn't matter who is winning. The "win" for everyone is if both games do well. I can only imagine there will be a lot of people crossing back and forth especially when we have content down periods in retail. And that's great. If either game is perceived as "losing" then it's a loss for everyone.

But people want to talk about it so here we are.

This was bound to happen. The big forum war is coming, im pretty sure.
Classic VS Retail

Because, as you know, as a moderator, this site has had endless...ENDLESS discussions on Past iterations of the game VS Current iteration of the game.
We all sit at the round table (for years) discussing this bullcrap over and over again for years on end and everyday.

The release of Classic will prove people wrong/right...about the stuff we have been discussing along the years at the round table. (MMO-C)

The release of classic is not only "the release of classic".
The release of classic will either put an end or sparkle more discussion on the forums.

We are all sitting here waiting for the release of classic with all our arguments ready to SHOOT once we know about Classic's success/failure.

Get ready for the crap show everyone

[therealstegblob]

but for being a shitty advertiser/unserious/shitty concept/art for children.

You realize without any irony that WoW is also a cartoony game...?

[Relapses]

This was bound to happen. The big forum war is coming, im pretty sure.
Classic VS Retail

Because, as you know, as a moderator, this site has had endless...ENDLESS discussions on Past iterations of the game VS Current iteration of the game.
We all sit at the round table (for years) discussing this bullcrap over and over again for years on end and everyday.

The release of Classic will prove people wrong/right...about the stuff we have been discussing along the years at the round table. (MMO-C)

The release of classic is not only "the release of classic".
The release of classic will either put an end or sparkle more discussion on the forums.

We are all sitting here waiting for the release of classic with all our arguments ready to SHOOT once we know about Classic's success/failure.

Get ready for the crap show everyone

The "shit show" is already here and it has been since Classic was announced. I mean, fuck, if you count the Classic discussion megathread it predates the announcement by another year or so. It won't be any different once Classic is released.

I touched on this a few pages ago but I firmly believe most people don't care. It's not a big deal. It's only an issue on this forum because there are two diametrically apposed circlejerks debating with each other over whose vision is representative of the "real" WoW. (Retail vs. Classic.) And while it's adorable (in the same way finding out your dog shit on your bed while you were sleeping is adorable) that there are so many people who are certain Classic will somehow be the game's Renaissance the reality is that the fucking game is included with a retail sub so it's plainly obvious which demographic Classic is being aimed towards.

[Big Thanks]

The "shit show" is already here and it has been since Classic was announced. I mean, fuck, if you count the Classic discussion megathread it predates the announcement by another year or so. It won't be any different once Classic is released.

I touched on this a few pages ago but I firmly believe most people don't care. It's not a big deal. It's only an issue on this forum because there are two diametrically apposed circlejerks debating with each other over whose vision is representative of the "real" WoW. (Retail vs. Classic.) And while it's adorable (in the same way finding out your dog shit on your bed while you were sleeping is adorable) that there are so many people who are certain Classic will somehow be the game's Renaissance the reality is that the fucking game is included with a retail sub so it's plainly obvious which demographic Classic is being aimed towards.

I agree with what you are saying but im preeeeety sure the crap show will be 1000% worse once we know about Classics Success/Failure.

[Relapses]

I agree with what you are saying but im preeeeety sure the crap show will be 1000% worse once we know Classics Success/Failure.

That's the thing: We won't know because there won't be any metric to show us whether it was.

[Big Thanks]

That's the thing: We won't know because there won't be any metric to show us whether it was.

We will find a way.

And if we wont...we will be right where we are today...and we wont be able to move forward...
We will be arguing Classic VS Reatail until we die?

No, im pretty sure we will find a way.