8 Million Players

WoW Classic WoW Classic General Discussion
22

For sure it will be over 9000!

17 Likes
23

id be surprised if more than a million are playing after a month or so

i have not seen all the much hype for this outside of here and private servers

1 Like
24

Maybe around a few million if your lucky. But I don’t think you realize the majority of those players that existed back then won’t come back for various reasons, real life issues being the top biggest reason. And even if most of them does play, they probably won’t make it into raiding. I bet casuals won’t even make it past bwl or past R6

1 Like
25

I think it will probably be somewhere around a million after the initial surge. It could be more, it could be less but there are a lot of games out now that were not around 15 years ago. For many the nostalgia will only last so long.

2 Likes
26

find population statistics for current day, new (as in the last 5 years) sandbox style mmos.

add a couple million if they are from an unknown company.

deduct a million if they are from a well known, major game company. (brand loyalty)

find the median number between all said games.

add the population of retail wow but first, deduct 25% from that number for those who refuse to play classic.

that should approximate what classic will attract.

now deduct 40% after the first six months (tourists leaving).

then gradually add 30% to that final number as word of mouth, re-spreads to former fans of vanilla and their friends and family and other sandbox mmo fans who didnt hear about it initially.

that should be the settled population that can be counted on as full time players over the course of 2 years from game launch. beyond that, i don’t know.

1 Like
27

casual players will be lucky to hit the level cap

1 Like
28

My guess is that it will kind of be like the following…

At launch roughly 6-8 million folks will immediately create toons.

1 week later 4 million folks will still have active toons

1 month later 2 to 2.5 million folks will have permanent active toons.

The greatest loss will be from the “retail” inquisitives, who wont get the non instant gratification of the game will leave.

Then it will be the impatient who can’t understand why after 2 weeks of playing the game a couple of hours a day they are only level 20. LOL .

Then populations will become stable.

4 Likes
29

I honestly believe that its going to be huge, like 8+ million players again. Vanilla WoW is the greatest MMORPG ever made and is very social/streamable which is a massive market now.

6 Likes
30

Prolly won’t get quite that many until they rerelease the Burning Crusade: classic

3 Likes
31

:sparkling_heart: tbc

8 Likes
32

that would be great.

1 Like
33

the initial learning curve or in this case, re-learning curve, will chase some players away but if a retail player plays it long enough to access the freedom of the talent trees…

/toothy grin

4 Likes
34

The greatest loss will be from the “retail” inquisitives, who wont get the non instant gratification of the game will leave.

There is not now, nor has there ever been, in WOW, in all the time I have been playing, any kind of “instant gratification”, nor has any existed. Ever.

This term has been thrown around and overused and misused.

I am pleased that you are finally getting what you wanted. I was opposed to it…Blizzard saw otherwise. Fine.

Repeatedly using this phrase does little to help your “cause”, if at all.

Whether you choose to admit it or not, 2004 gameplay DOES NOT fly in the modern marketplace. Nostalgia has its place, certainly, but not in the mainstream.

It isnt because “there is no instant gratification”, its because the entire genre, the framework around the way games are designed, the technology, the QoL changes that many seem to have a major issue with , are part and parcel of what modern gaming is, and THAT is to meet the expectations of demographics.

You sell to a market that wants your goods. You cater to a marketplace that will BRING you customers. Not lose them.

14 years ago may not seem that long to you…in gaming terms its the difference between a Voodoo 1 card with basic. ovl files using Open GL and the latest Nvidia cards.

4 Likes
35

There are so many factors to consider, not to mention the speculation involved due to blizzard not releasing sub numbers anymore. But here’s a little math to ponder.

At the end of Vanilla there were ~8mil subs
" " Burning Cursade ~11mil subs
" " Wrath of Linchking ~ 12mil subs
An increase of 4 million between the “golden years”
Now there’s no way to determine how many of those original 8 million stopped playing after vanilla to the increase may actually be different, but again, it’s hard to pin point that data. Blizzard knows but that’s it.

Then the subsequent decline
At the end of Cata = 10mil subs
" " Mists = 7.5mil subs
" " WoD = 6mil subs

So between the increase period and the decrease period (that we had data for) there is a +4mil and then -4mil.

So that’s a wash in terms of how to include it as a variant to follow a down trend. But, if we take the average of downturn and apply it to the next two xpacs, we can assume it would look something like
End of Legion ~4.5mil
End of Bfa ~ 3mil

Again, there’s absolutely no way to confirm this. All this is eyeball math at this point.
But if we take the difference between what we can assume is max on Vanilla, 8mil (which in now way can represent the amount of ppl that want to play, just the possiblity) and “current” subs 3mil. Give the potential of 5.5 mil.

Now to make better use of those numbers, we could assume that MAYBE 1/3 of that number of potential will have the time/interest in playing. So roughly 1.8million. Which would include ppl that just try it out and either don’t have time or go back to Bfa. From that, lets say 2/3 of the people will stay (either casual or hardcore) leaving us with 1.2million.

Now that’s just with math that can no way being confirmed, using ideas that can’t possible be validated. But 1.2million would still work I think.

36

Aehl,

Because you like instant gratification in your games, some of us, no MOST of us who are looking forward to classic donot need that for us to enjoy a great MMO. Its you and the groups that came on during Wrath that have ruined one of the best MMO’s out there and those of us looking forward to CLASSIC do so with both Nostalgia and the desire to once again play a GREAT MMO, and not some piece of instant gratz, that the game has turned into.

Why you are upset is beyond me, you will still have your retail and those of us who will be playing classic only will have our classic. Unless its the “fear” that classic will once again dominate in blizzard and pull the development teams away from any further horror shows they call retail?

6 Likes
37

technology and graphical appearance are indeed a draw but they dont have the same weight as they did initially. the only thing i can think of to explain this is after the stock market crash in 2008, the world’s economy grinded to a halt and with globalization shipping western jobs everywhere but western nations, the slow recovery caused many to be unemployed and as a result, to cure their game withdrawals, learned to enjoy simpler, less graphically intensive games that their old pcs could still play (having long since lost the ability to buy new pcs/graphics cards). as a result, gamers are all over the spectrum regarding the importance of how a graphic model appears or how technically advanced the game is.

38

technology and graphical appearance are indeed a draw but they dont have the same weight as they did initially

They do if you use that tech as a parallel to games developement.

39

have you seen the new games coming out of places like steam and unity? some of the most popular games are 8-bit. the game market is very fluid atm.

3 Likes
40

Because you like instant gratification in your games, some of us, no MOST of us who are looking forward to classic donot need that for us to enjoy a great MMO.

I think you need to reread my entire post, and then reply in context. How you came to that “conclusion” is beyond me…and by the way Italus, as far as games and developement are concerned?

I was alpha and beta testing games back when you used a 96k baud modem, played games using the Build engine. I started gaming actually back in the 80’s.

I gamed with an Apple IIE. An Amstrad. Every Pentium class up to and past Celeron and after. Used software and games that were DOS 6.22 based. WSin for Workgroups 3.1.1, Win 95, Win CE, Win ME, Win 2000 (one of the very first to translate from FAT 32 to NTFS architecture)

My conclusions about how gaming is today comes from the better part of thirty years of experience and observation.

Its you and the groups that came on during Wrath that have ruined one of the best MMO’s out there and those of us looking forward to CLASSIC do so with both Nostalgia and the desire to once again play a GREAT MMO, and not some piece of instant gratz, that the game has turned into.

Then please name me one instance, one example of “instant gratificatIon” in WOW. Just one will do.

Unless its the “fear” that classic will once again dominate in blizzard and pull the development teams away from any further horror shows they call retail?

More like exasperation at those who cannot or will not think outside the box.

3 Likes
41

character boost. hehe
/does victory lap

12 Likes