"Classic will be dead in 2 weeks when everyone remembers how bad it is"

[FelPlague]

So, where are all these doomsayers now? From the moment Classic was announced, there was just a constant deluge of shitposters and doomsayers around here proclaiming that it's "just nostalgia", "dead in X weeks/months", "everyone's gonna quit when they remember how bad the game is", etc. etc.

8 months in and servers are having 2+ hour queues to get in. Even the "medium" population servers are still very lively, with main cities being packed full of players during primetime. I'm on a Medium server and right now Orgrimmar is so full it's making my FPS drop to 30.

So much for "UHHH IT'S JUST NOSTALGIA, EVERYONE'S GONNA QUIT, DEAD IN 2 WEEKS"

i mean the servers only got queues once everyone was stuck in for quarintine, but yeah.
even live is having queues.

[XDurionX]

Tht is pretty much what happened once the levelling was done. Peoplelog in for 45 minutes or whatever it takes to clear the current phase and then leave it be.

[d00mh4cker]

Isnt the game dead though? What's left is raid loggers and some players chasing rank 14.

It's like 40 min que to BGs, zero people dueling outside cities, no one even cares anymore to world pvp, ally and horde just running pass eachother focusing on farming herbs and what not. Leveling is a desert.

Idk, feels dead.

[Ghostile]

Say it to my server. Every evening que 1-2 hours :P And TBH classic is more enjoyable than retail these days. Ive plaved both for a few monhts. BfA is ok for a short term like 2-3 weeks. Classic is long range fun.

I fail to see other long range activities in classic besides making gold and leveling alts, both of which are better in BFA.

[Greengrim]

I don't think I can recall any people/threads who claimed Classic will be dead 2 weeks in. Most of them (myself included) thought the population will drop massively 2 months in. Which is actually what happened. A lot of people (again, myself included) did quit after or shortly after they upped a toon to 60. That's why layers were removed and only a few servers remained well populated.

But dead? Not really, as there will always be these people for whom Classic was exclusively created. The same bunch of thousand people who used to play on that legacy server which Blizzard never managed to bring down for years, so they created Classic instead.

So yeah, Classic is still a thing, but a much lesser thing of what some people tend to believe.

[Aleksej89]

IMHO biggest flaw of classic is its classes where a lot of stuff was still unfinished/missing/pointless.

TBC brings a ton of improvements to classes which greatly improves the game from lvl 1, so i am really looking forward to it.

[Vakna]

Counterpoint: Where are all the naysayers that said Classic would overtake and kill retail? Checkmate.

[Simplex]

Congratulations, clap clap.
Quarantine time well spent.

[God Save The King]

I play the game. On launch I was on a server with massive queue times and loads of free transfers. By all accounts, the game at 60 is dead. There's a collection of hardcore PvPers pushing r14, and a decent smattering of guilds that are farming for AQ/Naxx, but from the launch to now, the dropoff has been massive. Leveling alts shows how dead the world is. I can never find a pug for a dungeon. Max level dungeons are a pipe dream and gearing an alt mainly comes from alt runs in my guild's raids. We're struggling to recruit. We're the biggest guild on the realm, with the fastest kill times, best execution, and first clears. At our peak had 5 raid groups all clearing MC in under 90 minutes without anything special like full consumables & buffs. We've had to cut down to 2 groups and a weekend alt/casual run. More than half of the MC guilds have died and the number of guilds consistently clearing BWL is substantially lower than MC was.

Maybe it's an issue on my server only, but the game feels like it is dying. And I think the dropoff is because people are remembering how bad it is. Let's be real, at level 60, once you have your pre-raid BiS, the only reason to log on weekly is to raid and maybe do some minor farming for gold for consumables (which aren't really needed given how easy the raids are). If you PvP there is a bit more to do, but ranking up is dependent not on skill but how many hours you can grind the same 3 battlegrounds for. There are few people who really want to do much of either. Leveling an alt is a pain with needing 5-10 days played depending on skill/class/gear/etc. Even in raiding and PvP, there is no real challenge. Clearing a raid the first day in under 3 hours was disappointing. I hoped BWL would at least take us a week. PvP has little to do with actually killing each other and everything to do with the meta of maximizing honor per hour. In most games I've been in, one side was more organized than the other, so they "win". To maximize honor/hour, the obvious losers sit to the side and fight with the winners for HKs, while the winners complete the objectives. Many a WSG was spent fighting at one of the GYs while a single guy ran the flag 3 times without contest. AB is the same, and AV is basically a glorified PvE raid boss.

The game has its charm, and I'll likely keep playing it until we clear Naxx, but let's be honest with ourselves and recognize that the game has dramatically dropped in population and only a few dedicated fans remain. There just isn't any solid content to keep ourselves busy nor is there any of that sense of world, exploration, or newness that made Classic WoW so good 16 years ago.

Given what's on the front page, I imagine what we saw happen from Classic to WoD is happening but in a very condensed time frame. All the hardcore players are flocking to the few servers that aren't dead, while servers like mine drain into the "mega" servers. It's interesting that on Classic launch, every realm had massive queue times, and now it's down to a small handful of servers. Kind of telling in itself.

[deenman]

Most? Where did you see that. I know obviously people have quit, but most? What makes you say that?

well,if by most we mean compared to those in the early days,than its safe to say yeah its most,i mean even my pve realm had huge ques early on,now it never happens,and even the top servers on eu barely see any ques,the list is full of low servers,the game isnt dead ofc,but it sure isnt doing amazing,and once shadowlands comes and tbc,its just gonna bleed out more

- - - Updated - - -

So, where are all these doomsayers now? From the moment Classic was announced, there was just a constant deluge of shitposters and doomsayers around here proclaiming that it's "just nostalgia", "dead in X weeks/months", "everyone's gonna quit when they remember how bad the game is", etc. etc.

8 months in and servers are having 2+ hour queues to get in. Even the "medium" population servers are still very lively, with main cities being packed full of players during primetime. I'm on a Medium server and right now Orgrimmar is so full it's making my FPS drop to 30.

So much for "UHHH IT'S JUST NOSTALGIA, EVERYONE'S GONNA QUIT, DEAD IN 2 WEEKS"

same can be said about the other side ''classic will have 10milion and never fall''...well,if we look at it today,compared to the first days,its pretty dead by comparison,my pve realm had big ques early on,now it never happenes,even the top servers barely get any and thats mostly because realm cap is very low,theres no cross realm zones,and the realms are very few,plenty of low realms,i dont get why blizz doesnt just merge them,horde on the pve ones could easily be merged to simply be on par with aliance numbers

[kamuimac]

So, where are all these doomsayers now? From the moment Classic was announced, there was just a constant deluge of shitposters and doomsayers around here proclaiming that it's "just nostalgia", "dead in X weeks/months", "everyone's gonna quit when they remember how bad the game is", etc. etc.

8 months in and servers are having 2+ hour queues to get in. Even the "medium" population servers are still very lively, with main cities being packed full of players during primetime. I'm on a Medium server and right now Orgrimmar is so full it's making my FPS drop to 30.

So much for "UHHH IT'S JUST NOSTALGIA, EVERYONE'S GONNA QUIT, DEAD IN 2 WEEKS"

well they are for sure not playing on servers which are now low/medium - aka majority

probably playing retail

[deenman]

In no way does that make it dead when there are realms still with queues.

sure but what does that que rly say?the realm capacity is ofc lower than retail,there are no sharded zones,the number of realms are pretty low and people tend to funnel themselves to the high pop realms,plenty of them are low,on eu for example i tried loging in at 22:00 and no realm had ques...this with people satying home...i dont understand why they dont just merge them

[Redroniksre]

Well like others have said, most of the people checking it out have quit. I've always said it would have a decent sized core playerbase which holds true now. But there are a lot that would have quit just during the levelling process alone (god knows i did). But i still see some "It has more than retail!" People occasionally so nobody has really left.

[kamuimac]

I play the game. On launch I was on a server with massive queue times and loads of free transfers. By all accounts, the game at 60 is dead. There's a collection of hardcore PvPers pushing r14, and a decent smattering of guilds that are farming for AQ/Naxx, but from the launch to now, the dropoff has been massive. Leveling alts shows how dead the world is. I can never find a pug for a dungeon. Max level dungeons are a pipe dream and gearing an alt mainly comes from alt runs in my guild's raids. We're struggling to recruit. We're the biggest guild on the realm, with the fastest kill times, best execution, and first clears. At our peak had 5 raid groups all clearing MC in under 90 minutes without anything special like full consumables & buffs. We've had to cut down to 2 groups and a weekend alt/casual run. More than half of the MC guilds have died and the number of guilds consistently clearing BWL is substantially lower than MC was.

Maybe it's an issue on my server only, but the game feels like it is dying. And I think the dropoff is because people are remembering how bad it is. Let's be real, at level 60, once you have your pre-raid BiS, the only reason to log on weekly is to raid and maybe do some minor farming for gold for consumables (which aren't really needed given how easy the raids are). If you PvP there is a bit more to do, but ranking up is dependent not on skill but how many hours you can grind the same 3 battlegrounds for. There are few people who really want to do much of either. Leveling an alt is a pain with needing 5-10 days played depending on skill/class/gear/etc. Even in raiding and PvP, there is no real challenge. Clearing a raid the first day in under 3 hours was disappointing. I hoped BWL would at least take us a week. PvP has little to do with actually killing each other and everything to do with the meta of maximizing honor per hour. In most games I've been in, one side was more organized than the other, so they "win". To maximize honor/hour, the obvious losers sit to the side and fight with the winners for HKs, while the winners complete the objectives. Many a WSG was spent fighting at one of the GYs while a single guy ran the flag 3 times without contest. AB is the same, and AV is basically a glorified PvE raid boss.

The game has its charm, and I'll likely keep playing it until we clear Naxx, but let's be honest with ourselves and recognize that the game has dramatically dropped in population and only a few dedicated fans remain. There just isn't any solid content to keep ourselves busy nor is there any of that sense of world, exploration, or newness that made Classic WoW so good 16 years ago.

Given what's on the front page, I imagine what we saw happen from Classic to WoD is happening but in a very condensed time frame. All the hardcore players are flocking to the few servers that aren't dead, while servers like mine drain into the "mega" servers. It's interesting that on Classic launch, every realm had massive queue times, and now it's down to a small handful of servers. Kind of telling in itself.

3 months ago i already mentioned in this kind of threads that blizzard needs to start working on plan how they will merge dying servers.

it was obvious to anyone with more then 2 brain cells that its exackly what will happen - and it happpend.

imo what would save it a bit is 2 things :

1)server merges to keep less servers but all with "full" status
2)option to buy char boost to 60 - this way people who cant stand leveling would have option to join endgame and help to repopulate dying guilds.

[Jotaux]

In no way does that make it dead when there are realms still with queues.

Realms have queues because server capacity was reduced when layers were removed.

[Huggykaze]

It's not dead, but if you still think Classic has a million+ players then... lol.
Give it up, Classic is not the rebirth of WoW, Retail is still more popular, and for like 70% of people it really was rose-tinted glasses.

Well, simple interpolation suggests that Retail itself may be below 1 million players at this point, well below if we account for the fact that 8.3 is shit. If Classic was at 1 million it'd be doing extremely well. My current guess would be 800k for Retail and 500k for Classic.

[skumnasty]

Classic is long range fun.

Are you joking? The only "long range" of classic for me was the long ass leveling experience, which was painful as hell. All my mates said "it'll make you feel so 'connected' and 'immersed' with your character that you won't want to quit!" Alas, I wasn't really immersed, and definitely not enough to make the boring and easy end game content worth my time.

I stand with those who may seem rude by saying classic only holds up due to nostalgia, because as someone who didn't play it much back in the day I thought it was terrible.

[Jazzhands]

Regarding the million+ assertion - this is going to depend on how you classifying having a player and if you include China.
US+EU servers had around 450k players logged within the last 2 weeks so you're probably not wrong if you take a "played in the last 2 weeks" definition, although without knowing the China numbers it's impossible to say (source: https://ironforge.pro/)

Keep in mind the 450k are players who appear in Warcraft Logs which is going to miss anyone not 60 although thats likely offset by people who raid on an alt also.

Server queues are absolutely because those from smaller servers (for OCE this would be Felstriker) have moved (in this case to Arugal). This is in part due to the numbers reducing on those servers as fairweather fans left after finishing what they wanted (i.e. getting to 60 or clearing MC).

Classic is an excellent addition to the WoW family. TBC will further add a massive influx of subscriptions into the franchise with a likely WOTLK to follow up and with Shadowlands around the corner - the future is bright for WoW!

ZG dropping this week with AQ20/40 on the horizon and of course the opportunity to raid NAXX which 99% of players will not have experienced outside of the WOTLK version. I'd expect to see TBC drop within 12 months to similar fan-fare that classic received although a potentially reduced drop off as an improved PvP experiences retains a much higher number of players.

Looking forward to Shadowlands of course - although reading some of the negativity already on these forums makes me worried. That said these forums have turned into an unmoderated winge-fest of hate and malcontent.

I think Classic is great. I'd love TBC, and WoTLK. They're all great for different reasons. It's the rabid fan boys like the OP that are the problem.

Also, most people still won't touch Naxx, it takes for too much investment, especially by today's WoW standards. Will more than the 2% see it? likely. But I doubt most players will reach that level.

[czarek]

Are you joking? The only "long range" of classic for me was the long ass leveling experience, which was painful as hell. All my mates said "it'll make you feel so 'connected' and 'immersed' with your character that you won't want to quit!" Alas, I wasn't really immersed, and definitely not enough to make the boring and easy end game content worth my time.

I stand with those who may seem rude by saying classic only holds up due to nostalgia, because as someone who didn't play it much back in the day I thought it was terrible.

Thats ur opinion man. Prob classic isnt for you. I love it :P And tbh lvling isnt that bad actually ive made 50-60 in 3 days with around 4h daily play time.

[Kithelle]

So, where are all these doomsayers now? From the moment Classic was announced, there was just a constant deluge of shitposters and doomsayers around here proclaiming that it's "just nostalgia", "dead in X weeks/months", "everyone's gonna quit when they remember how bad the game is", etc. etc.

8 months in and servers are having 2+ hour queues to get in. Even the "medium" population servers are still very lively, with main cities being packed full of players during primetime. I'm on a Medium server and right now Orgrimmar is so full it's making my FPS drop to 30.

So much for "UHHH IT'S JUST NOSTALGIA, EVERYONE'S GONNA QUIT, DEAD IN 2 WEEKS"

Same thing can be said about all the Vanilla Zealots who proclaimed Classic would kill Live and that Classic would get millions of subs and never lose them, what is your point with this post exactly?