Confirmation, Classic wow has "MILLIONS" of players.

[schwarzkopf]

You just described Warlords of Draenor :P

No - just described Vanilla/Classic. Hope that clarifies your error.

[Denymeplz]

There is absolutely NO denying that WoW Classic will just make the total pie bigger, not smaller.

Totally, its a win win scenario in the grand scheme of things, at least for me, im just saying people refuted the OP cause hes way too biased.

[Thes]

It's not a competition and the sub works for both versions. It's a relic of the past and a museum piece, just enjoy it.

I guess sometimes things really were better in the past, lul.

[anon5123]

The people I know never touched these “illegal” servers. It is as good as your theoretical thoughts. It is also quite logical, since those private servers never had millions of log ins either compared to the >100.000.000 unique log in accounts that Blizzard talked about a decade ago already ...

So you don't have data to back up your statement, just a personal anecdote of a few people.

Good to know

[Murthag]

Back when I was still posting in this board following the Nostalrius shutdown event, Blizzard Shills (or Retail Fanboys) in this board used to say something to the effect that:

"THE PEOPLE PLAYIN' ON PIRATE SERVERS ARE AN INSIGNIFICANT MINORITY NOT WORTH LISTENING TO OR CATERING TO. THEY ARE PLAYIN' VANILLA ON PIRATE SERVERS BECAUSE THEY CANNOT AFFORD TO PAY A SUB. THEY COULD NEVER POSSIBLY FILL IN A SINGLE RETAIL SERVER BECAUSE THEY ARE SO FEW".

These very same people continue to post the same crap on this board 4 years later.

So disgusted of the Retail fanboyism on this board, which is why I stopped posting.

The irony I feel the same of the classic playerbase

[Hoofnmouth]

In fairness it's reasonable to assume classic brought back more inactive players than it stole from retail.

Absolutely it did bring some back and it has some that play retail also.

[Erous]

So disgusted of the Retail fanboyism on this board, which is why I stopped posting.

It's just, you know, against the law to pirate copyrighted material.

[VinceVega]

Its strange how many people on MMO Champ HATE WoW Classic......its sad.

Same the other way... i can't even mention retail to compare somthing withou getting shill or fanboy thrown at me with a little dust of insults along the way

[Lochton]

It was mentioned twice already, Classic wow brought back millions of subs to World of Warcraft.
My assumption is 3.5m subs.

Hah, that wasn't a confirmation. Even so, the sub number is for both games anyways.

[Gratlim]

All the people that came back I know still play WoW after many months now.

I see it as a far more fun casual MMO, that will be here forever.

My son and I for example play 2 times a week for 3 hours or so and it is just like the old days: F U N.

Nice! I agree and have a lot of fun as well. I ended up on the pvp server of the guy that was the world first 60 streamer. That can explain the elitist jerk environement here i guess.

[Kithelle]

It was mentioned twice already, Classic wow brought back millions of subs to World of Warcraft.
My assumption is 3.5m subs.

A.K.A. your estimate is once against complete bullshit. Noted.

- - - Updated - - -

Hah, that wasn't a confirmation. Even so, the sub number is for both games anyways.

He is always coming up with fake estimates...by 2020 I'm sure he will estimate Classic has 5 million subs.

[sensei]

I leveled a gnome mage to level 6 and then uninstalled Classic, am I part of those millions? My brother came back, played 3 weeks and quit, is he part of those millions? No offense to anyone that likes Classic, but Blizzard was never going to say "We fucked up, we spent all this money and half the people have already stopped playing" because the stockholders would flip. So they look for an easy way to spin the information, not enough that they can be accused of lying, but enough to seem positive without committing to anything should they ever need to backup what they said.

[Akka]

I'm in a server that doesnt share realms with any other and its preety full.

You misunderstand the difference between CRZ and server groups.

[MalfLFT]

Yeah it probably did. Then it fell off a cliff.

Which is why they are unable to remove layers from most servers 2 months later. Face it, the classic drop off is real, but substantially smaller than it has been for every single expansion since wrath.

It's quite simple, classic is a far superior experience If you like mmorpgs

[Relapses]

The classic v. retail argument is subjective and dumb cause everyone plays for different reasons. And they're paying the same company the same subscription. I guess it can be a fun subject to discuss though. Also, if the retail population ever got low enough Blizzard could cross more servers together.

I don't see why they're proud of being part of something they didn't directly help create. I suppose it's nice to see the results of something you helped fund and benefit from it in some way. But again, hiring more devs doesn't exactly expedite the process. I suppose the incentive of higher bonuses and raises is an incentive to produce a better game and possibly listen to the players.

The debate has existed since before Classic was announced.

I'll share my personal experience with this topic since it accounts for likely about 20-30% of my total posts on this forum. Before Classic was official, there was a 2,000+ page megathread about the potential of Legacy servers. Back then, my biggest issue with Legacy realms was that it would sever the community into factions of "pro-Classic/anti-retail" and "anti-Classic/pro-retail" which would eat away at the underlying fundamental purpose of WoW: It's a fucking video game. I was one of the most staunchly "anti-Legacy" posters and I was very much afraid of the (what I perceived to be) irreversible damage Legacy realms would have caused to the community. Now that it's been released I've changed my mentality a bit. I'm not "anti-Classic" as much as I am anti-echo chamber. Players have, unsurprisingly, already divided themselves into the factions I was concerned about before... but instead of railing against something which I am personally powerless to stop, I simply try to bring levity into discussions where players are either pointlessly bashing retail or attempting to make Classic seem more important than it is. This, too, has caused me to have a bit of a reputation on this forum but such is the price of not drinking the Classic Kool-Aid.

[Relapses]

Your first viewpoint was totally wrong because you didn't give the majority of people the benefit of the doubt. It's nice how you've changed your viewpoint though, hivemind communities are disgusting. I'm not going to go through your post history because I'm an asshole but. What did you think would happen if the majority of the community somehow did split?

Honestly, what scared me the most was that if it was popular enough that the crazies fanatics who want Classic+ would get their way and we'd end up with two competing timelines for WoW... retail and Legacy. My biggest fear is that WoW would end up like RuneScape with two different versions of the same game trying to appease two slightly different audiences. (Ironically, most of Classic+'s biggest supporters point to this exact paradigm as their "ideal" model for WoW. :shudder:)

edit: I forgot I actually linked to the megathread in my sig so here you go:

I don't think the idea of Legacy is flawed. It definitely deserves to be explored and I support it conceptually. But certainly not while Blizzard is providing updates for the retail version of the game. Legacy is something you add to a MMO to extend its lifecycle after you've shuttered its primary storyline. I personally don't see it happening for another expansion or two, potentially even more if Blizzard continues to make quality expansions using their current business model.

[Axxil]

Back when I was still posting in this board following the Nostalrius shutdown event, Blizzard Shills (or Retail Fanboys) in this board used to say something to the effect that:

"THE PEOPLE PLAYIN' ON PIRATE SERVERS ARE AN INSIGNIFICANT MINORITY NOT WORTH LISTENING TO OR CATERING TO. THEY ARE PLAYIN' VANILLA ON PIRATE SERVERS BECAUSE THEY CANNOT AFFORD TO PAY A SUB. THEY COULD NEVER POSSIBLY FILL IN A SINGLE RETAIL SERVER BECAUSE THEY ARE SO FEW".

These very same people continue to post the same crap on this board 4 years later.

So disgusted of the Retail fanboyism on this board, which is why I stopped posting.

We don't miss you.

[TwoMana]

It was mentioned twice already, Classic wow brought back millions of subs to World of Warcraft.
My assumption is 3.5m subs.

You’ll also notice they used past tense.

[Bakis]

Given that that includes all of the tourists from BfA that's hardly surprising. Classic is doing really well and that's great. Let's not get into cheerleading by writing that stuff that's misleading.

Will be the same around with Shadowlands. Classic players will pop in, level to max and then realised that nothing changed.
Pack their bags and continue fulltime in classic.

[Echocho]

No they said millions of players had played classic. That's old+new subscribers